Basketball players fleeing Ukraine find home with University of Lethbridge Pronghorns

The squeak of their shoes and the thump of the ball on the court feels blessedly normal for Vika Kovalevska and Vlada Hozalova.

Basketball provides a brief sanctuary from the ceaseless undercurrent of tension they feel over what's happening at home in Ukraine.

Hoops also helps ground them in their new life in Alberta, where they play basketball for the University of Lethbridge Pronghorns.

"Basketball helps to distract from everything that has happened around you," Kovalevska told The Canadian Press.

"I just try to focus on the practices, turn off my brain and immerse myself in the world of a fast and dynamic game, where there is not time to think about anything else."

Kovalevska and Hozalova are friends who have played internationally for Ukraine's under-20 women's team. The two guards arrived in Canada in May.

Kovalevska, 23, enrolled in business studies in Lethbridge and will play in Canada West this season.

Hozalova, 24, needs to complete an EAP (English for Academic Purposes) at the university before she's academically eligible to play conference games.

She can still practise with the Pronghorns and play exhibition games.

Hozalova wrote her answers to The Canadian Press in an email.

Her southeast city of Berdyansk, now under Russian occupation, was bombed in February. Hozalova got out when a humanitarian corridor opened.

She still had to get past multiple Russian checkpoints and says she endured a tense interrogation at one.

"Those were the scariest moments of my life. I thought for a second that I might not make it out alive," Hozalova wrote.

"My every day begins with the fact that I watch the news and, unfortunately, the other day, Russia announced that my city is already (in) Russia. I am homeless and have nowhere