Junior of the Month: Vironika Birioukova

By Pam Ramsey

Photo by Charlie Neuman, copyright 2002

An adorable, shy little girl with a bouncy blonde ponytail, a wicked serve and killer forehand returned home to San Diego from the 2002 U.S. Open Table Tennis Champions/ITTF Pro Tour with a new title to her name: U.S. Open Under 12 Girls’ Champion. In May, she won the Under 13 event and took second to her older sister Vika (Viktoria) in the Under 16 Girls’ event at the Western Open.  She won Under 12 Girls’ Singles at the Nationals.

Who is she and where did she come from?  She emerged on the scene of the San Diego Table Tennis Assoc. in November 2001 … out of nowhere. Her story is not a typical case of a kid growing up and playing table tennis in America. She is a victim caught between two countries.  Nika (short for Veronika) was born in the United States. Her Russian parents, Svetlana and Mikhail, had traveled to New York to visit relatives in the fall of 1990. Svetlana was eight months pregnant, and Nika decided she was going to be born early, as an American.

The family returned to St. Petersburg, where her mom, a musician, taught her how to play the violin, and dad, a sports coach, taught her how to play table tennis. She took to the paddle instead of the violin. Before long, Nika was winning tournaments against older players and was on the track that might have taken her to the Russian National Team. She was, after all, the Girls’ Junior European Champion at age 10. Then, last year at the ripe old age of 11, the Russian authorities figured out that this Russian whiz kid was, technically, an American.

Nika, whose dreams of becoming an OLYMPIC athlete, had those exact dreams shattered. She was shunned by Russia and would never be able to represent her home country at all. Realization set in and the family flew to America to help their daughter reach for that dream. Since coming to America, Nika has had a streak of wins and has shown her true potential of becoming an elite player after all. All she needed was a country to call home and a country that would stand behind her in accomplishing her dreams. We expect to see her representing USA in the 2008 Olympics … and making her dreams come true.