At the ISKA Ukrainian Kickboxing Championship, which concluded on 29 March in Kyiv, one detail stood out in the protocols: among 650 athletes from across the country, the most gold medals were brought home by trainees of a club from Irpin — a city that lay in ruins three years earlier after a month of Russian occupation.
Sports club "Reforma" fielded 33 athletes as part of the Kyiv Oblast team. The result: 43 gold, 13 silver, and 23 bronze medals. In the team standings among clubs, "Reforma" took first place in Ukraine.
For comparison: the entire Kyiv Oblast team, which included representatives from 12 coaching staffs in the region, won 59 gold medals — meaning the Irpin club provided the lion's share of the team's medal haul, which ultimately finished second in the overall team standings. Chernihiv Oblast won.
"This is an excellent result and the product of the work of all 12 coaches from Kyiv Oblast. At the same time, we congratulate the strong Chernihiv regional team on their victory at the Ukrainian Championship"
Volodymyr Sotin, Honored Master of Sports of Ukraine in kickboxing, coach of the "Reforma" club
Sotin is not just a regional coach. A two-time world champion and European champion in ISKA kickboxing, he brought the club back onto the competitive calendar after Irpin endured occupation and extensive destruction. In autumn 2024, 16 "Reforma" athletes represented Ukraine at the World Championship in Vienna — and that result was already called a record for the city. The current championship made it a national record.
The championship gathered about 650 athletes and 1,240 participants across various categories — one of the largest domestic kickboxing events in Ukraine during the full-scale war. The fact that the competition took place at this scale at all is a separate answer to questions about the state of Ukrainian sport under wartime conditions.
The next task for "Reforma" is to confirm their top spot at the Ukrainian Cup, where this time the competition will not be regional but directly between clubs. Whether they can repeat the result without the advantage of "regional" arithmetic will be revealed in the summer season.
