The water ski team recently recruited two new skiers from Belarus, making the team even more internationally diverse.
The new skiers, Nikita Papakul and Sergey Bushin, have come to ULM for the opportunity to continue competing in the sport while earning their master’s degrees.
Bushin and Papakul were offered to come to ULM, but they had one year of school before earning their degrees.
Bushin said, “I will say that the most important reason that we didn’t come two years ago was because we wanted to get our degree, to finish that.”
Bushin has a bachelor’s degree in computer math, and Papakul has a bachelor’s degree in management. Prior to ULM, Papakul and Bushin cable-skied for Team Belarus, the nation’s water ski team. There are only six members on the cable team and six on the boat team. “Our team is really tough and hard to get on. Most of the guys are experienced and around 28 years old, so we were kind of young compared to them,” Bushin said.
The two competed internationally with the team for five years, winning several medals. Papakul was the world champion behind the cable in 2008, and Bushin came in second.
Although they are new to ULM, they’ve already found an obvious difference from their previous college experience.
Papakul said, “We definitely like the campus life.” Bushin said, “The whole process of education [was] completely different. We have the gyms, we have the swimming pools, but you have to pay.”
Papakul said, “Student sports are not very popular in our country. We watch NCAA and wonder if we can do something close to that in our country,” Papakul said, “The big influence on our coming here was our team mates from Belarus, Natallia Berdnikava and Aleksey Zharnasek. They are the best skiers in our team, and they just showed us that ULM is [the] place to go.”