It is sad and heartbreaking to lose friends, especially the best, most dedicated, great professionals in their field, longtime colleagues, like-minded people and just good people…
The Lviv Oblast Tennis Federation reported the sad news.
During the last three extremely difficult and disturbing years for our country, outstanding coaches, famous tennis figures, organizers and popularizers of tennis from Lviv region and Ukraine passed away: Honored coaches of Ukraine – Zenon Klementovych Dombrovskyi (August 31, 2019) and Yaroslav Vasyliovych Zatorskyi (26.08.2022); Oleg Teodorovych Mykyta (November 2, 2020), Yurii Fedorovych Kulechko (August 1, 2020) and Roman Geroninovych Mereshchak, Zolochiv (October 24, 2021).
This is a heavy and irreversible loss of the best people for the entire tennis community of Lviv region.
A special place in the tennis life and activities of the Lviv region was occupied by the figure of ZT of Ukraine, the coach of the highest category, Yaroslav Zatorskyi, who devoted more than 55 years of his conscious life to his beloved business and profession. To say that he loved tennis is an understatement, he adored it; he lived with it, spent the day and spent the night on the courts. He always had the best clay court in the Lviv region at the tennis base of the Lviv Palace of Sports “Ukraine”: always clean, well-kept, modernly equipped and perfectly level. Yaroslav Vasyliovych did not have days off from the courts, he was at his fixed court every morning at 6:00 a.m. and brought it to perfect readiness for training or competitions, and when it began to get dark, he rolled it with a heavy roller and watered it abundantly at night.
Ya.V. Zatorskyi was a great popularizer of tennis, a talented organizer and founder of a huge number of tennis competitions, both at the All-Ukrainian and international levels, as well as veteran-amateur tournaments.
Yaroslav Vasyliovych was a workaholic and extremely capable person; transferred all his experience and professionalism to students in relation to training, competitions, observance of tennis ethics and respect for each other. His students never cursed and had a high culture of education. Discipline and a conscientious attitude to training have always been his priority in the education of tennis players of a high sports level.
During his professional career, Yaroslav Vasyliovych trained a whole galaxy of top-class tennis players: more than 20 Masters of Sports of the Soviet Union and Ukraine, including prize-winners, champions of Ukraine and important international tennis tournaments; collections of Ukraine, with which he traveled to many countries in Europe and the world. Young tennis players of the Zatorskyi school as part of the national team of the Lviv region up to 14 years old (4 students in the team – all his students) won the Spartakiad of Ukraine!
Yaroslav Vasyliovych also deserves great credit for training a galaxy of young coaches of the new generation of Lviv region: Orest Mostyuk, Robert Varga, Stanislav Mrachkovskyi, Dmytro Stasyuk, Serhiy Ragozin, Ostap Tkach (founder of the 1st tennis academy in Lviv “U-Next”), who already trained masters of sports, champions and members of national teams of Ukraine.
In his tennis creative work, he was a moderate maximalist: he always demanded to fight for the highest places at competitions, but did not force their achievement for the sake of victory at any cost, in order to avoid injuries; everything was achieved consistently. Therefore, his students always had high technical, physical, moral and willpower, combat training and the least traumatism.
I will say for myself: Y.V. Zatorsky has always been my best friend during the 40 years of our collegial and family friendship, decent, honest in relations, principled and fair, always ready to help. He enjoyed great respect and authority among the tennis leadership, coaches, students and the entire tennis community, both on the grounds of Lviv Region and Ukraine. For me, he was an example of high professionalism and conscientious attitude to his favorite work.
And his favorite expression: “Tennis is life, and everything else is trifles” speaks for itself and will remain in my heart with a bright memory FOREVER!
Anatoly Stasyuk