From Ukraine to U.S., how ‘tough background’ prepared Allen University’s new kicker

At age 8, he was designated as “at-risk” by Ukrainian officials — because his mother was an out-of-work alcoholic — and sent to a state-run orphanage.

At 13, after five years there, and following a three-week agency visit to the United States at Christmas, he was adopted by Carol and Mark Sherling and moved to McDonough, Georgia.

He was introduced to American football one day while kicking a soccer ball in the Sherlings’ yard. Carol Sherling said to him, via a cell-phone translator (he spoke no English at the time), “Maybe you should go out for the high school team.”

And this past December, after two years of junior-college and being recruited mostly over the Internet, he arrived in Columbia as Allen University’s new kicker.

Yaroslav Sherling laughed as his football journey was recounted.

”Soccer is my favorite (sport),” he said, “but I do football because I can. And I’m good at it.”

Tall and lanky at 6-foot-4 and 165 pounds, with an engaging grin, the 22-year-old known to teammates as “Yaro” is — other than his immigrant back-story — a typical college football player. He hangs out with the Yellow Jackets’ other specialists and his roommates (holder Ashton Duncan and snapper Caleb Crawford); considers a trip to Golden Corral a fine dining experience (a more typical meal is chicken tenders from Cook Out); and hits Five Points on weekends with Duncan, who has a car.

He’s also head coach Teddy Keaton’s secret weapon: a junior with field goal range of 48 to 55 yards and kickoffs that routinely bounce through opponents’ end zones.

For Allen, “he fit the bill,” said Keaton, who re-started the Yellow Jackets’ program in 2018. “His (adoptive) parents were excited about him continuing his (football career). They liked us and we liked him.”

Three weeks ago, Yaro’s strong right leg produced a chip-shot 27-yard field goal (he missed a longer attempt due to a bad snap) and a PAT in Allen’s season-opening 16-10 win over Clark Atlanta in a game played at Fairfield Central High School. In a 21-7 loss at Livingstone, he made his only PAT try. And this past week he connected for a 41-yard field goal in a 40-9 loss to Brevard College.

The Yellow Jackets host Middle Georgia State on Saturday for a 5 p.m. game.

Keaton has had international athletes before: an Australian kicker who went from Stillman (Alabama) College with Keaton to play for an FCS championship team at Jacksonville State, and another kicker from Uganda who started out as a tennis player. But Yaro, he said, is unique.

“He’s more mature than most (players),” Keaton said. “He goes to class, and he kicks in his spare time (sessions that can run an hour, vs. a more typical 10-15 minutes). He gets upset if he’s not perfect.”

He was born Yaroslav Voloshyn, growing up in a broken home in Karolov, Ukraine. His mother, he says, is an alcoholic who couldn’t hold a job; when she and his father split up, his two older sisters moved in with their grandmother, but Yaro “stuck with my mom” as she tried — but failed — to find work.

One day when he was home alone, “people knocked at our door,” he said. “They told me, ‘Your mom has no job; she’s ineligible to be a parent.’ They left a document there and told me to get my clothes and come with them. I said, ‘OK.’”

He spent the next five years in the nearby city of Oleksndriy before qualifying (as a top-10 student) for a U.S. adoption program. “My photo was on a Facebook profile, and people in the U.S. could see us,” he said. “If the family likes you, they call.”

Many families don’t want older children, but Yaro says the Sherlings had an older son, Andrew, and two younger daughters, Alyssa (a cheerleader at Georgia) and Madeline. “How I saw it, I was a perfect fit,” he said.

At the family’s urging, he tried out for the kicking job at Ola High School, where coach Jared Zito was starting his second season. Not long after attending a recruiting camp at Zito’s urging, Georgia Military College coach Taylor Burks called to offer a scholarship, and the Bulldogs were 8-2 and “sadly, 5-5” in Yaro’s two seasons.

“I didn’t know then if I wanted to keep going,” he said. Then last December, Allen special teams coach Brayton Smith — who’d viewed Yaro on Georgia Military’s website — called and told him, “We need a kicker.” A visit to Columbia sold Yaro on the idea of attending an inner-city school after his time in McDonough (population 25,782 in 2018) and even smaller Milledgeville, Georgia (18,614).

Smith needed little convincing that he had his man.

“His film was outstanding,” the 26-year-old former college kicker said. “I was blown away.”

Meeting Yaro only confirmed that: “He has a passion to be great, a different air about him,” Smith said. “With his tough background, I knew he could handle what we were doing” as a second-year program.

His English is good — when spelling names, Yaro usually “writes” the letters on his palm — and Duncan, his snapper, says Yaro has fit in well with his mostly African-American teammates. “His accent is kind of funny; he’s funny but he doesn’t know it,” Duncan said. “He’s a cool dude.”

“He’s just so positive, just keeps going,” Keaton said. “He’s a minor celebrity on campus (because) everyone loves an underdog. These might be the best years of his life.”

In fact, Yaro admits to just two “complaints”: “Soccer is still my favorite sport,” he said, and football “was more fun in high school. Now, every game is like a business trip.”

If so, then Allen’s small-time operation suits Yaro — most of the time. His only missed PAT occurred, Smith says, because he intentionally tried to punch a low kick to prevent the football from landing atop the roof of a building behind the end zone, delaying the game.

That won’t be an issue as Allen plays games at Benedict’s Charlie Johnson Stadium this fall. Might larger crowds intimidate Yaro?

“I like that,” he said, grinning. Life these days is pretty good.