Soaring above the rest

Mariya Golotyuk was slated to excel in acrobatics, and only acrobatics, from the time she was four.

Growing up in Ukraine, Golotyuk, now an accounting and internal audit graduate student, said her childhood was dominated by days perfecting the skills that earned her a slot in an Olympic training school.

But a misstep on that path to excellence started a new journey to honor she never could have achieved in her home country.

Golotyuk gained the number one spot on the U.S. Army ROTC Order of Merit List in September. This achievement signifies her as the overall top Army ROTC cadet in the country out of more than 5,600 — an accomplishment Army ROTC Director Lt. Col. Samuel Cook likened to winning the Heisman Trophy.

Though she's only spent the last several years working toward that high point, Golotyuk spent her whole life challenging the goals laid out for her.

From age 4, she began preening her acrobatic abilities in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. By the time she was 12 years old, she had reached the highest level in the Olympic reserve, the Soviet School for Sport, where she'd been handpicked to live and train away from her family and any opportunity for formal education.

"I did flips and handstands in my sleep, and through most of the day and night," Golotyuk wrote in a personal statement to the university.

But the strenuous exercise, which was meant for older and stronger athletes, led to a serious internal injury and abdominal surgery that left Golotyuk bedridden for five months.

"They pushed me a little bit too much," she said. "I was too young to be doing those exercises. You're supposed to be 16 and I was only 12."

During a year-long recovery, Golotyuk continued training in tennis, but the unforgiving school would not allow her a second chance and cut her from the program, she said.

"Pretty much … if you get injured, they kind of kick your ass out of there," Golotyuk said. "It was pretty brutal."

Golotyuk returned to academics to pursue some of the only areas of study then available to Ukrainian students — math and physics — at the Technical University of Kiev.

Following her experience playing on the college's tennis team, Golotyuk was invited to teach the sport at Trinity University in San Antonio, where she arrived about five years ago.

Free for the first time to explore any hobby or academic discipline she pleased, Golotyuk wasted no time and began building an arsenal of experiences as she acclimated herself to a new language and culture.

She spent a year and a half in San Antonio, then hopped a plane to Washington, D.C., where she's been ever since, studying economics at this university and teaching acrobatics in Columbia.

She also took up surfing, had her artistic sketches published and — out of a desire to explore an area closed off to women in Ukraine — joined the university's Army ROTC.

"Adjusting to this culture, females have the same recognition as males, which is a little different than other countries," Golotyuk said. "But I think it was a good adjustment. At first, I couldn't believe it, like wow, is that real? And then two years down the road, I'm like, okay, it is real."

While juggling motherhood and a packed schedule, Golotyuk quickly rose through the ranks in the ROTC program. Last year, she woke up at 4 a.m. each morning to drop her two sons, Phillip and Boris, at a babysitter before morning training.

"The whole plan was crazy," Golotyuk said. "This semester, I was just like, wow, I can just put my clothes on and go."

Cook said Golotyuk, one of only two Army ROTC cadets at this university with children, rarely reveals that she's faced any extra challenges while balancing her course load, multiple jobs and ROTC responsibilities.

"She's very humble, she doesn't come out and say things," Cook said. "I have to pointedly ask her and then she'll sort of dodge around the subject."

She commands the university's ROTC battalion and devotes extra hours to helping new cadets by training with them at the gym and introducing them to military history through trips to Washington museums.

"She has the gift of putting people to work together as a team without the feeling that you have to do it and she motivates them to work towards their goal," said Elena Mateescu, a senior legal studies major at University of Maryland University College who became friends with Golotyuk through a military science class. "It's something that's very hard to achieve, not a lot of people have that skill."

Today, Golotyuk's top ranking — she was also chosen as the U.S. Army Cadet Command's Cadet of the Year — guarantees her a choice position as a National Guard military intelligence officer.

"The world's hers right now, she can do whatever she wants," Cook said.

As Golotyuk looks even further forward, her plans quickly spill into the next few decades — she will serve in the military for at least ten years, pursue a career in accounting and internal audits, raise her children and consider returning to school for a law degree.

But this life plan is different from the one handed to her as a child.

And Golotyuk said she is happy to accept that the motivation and drive that brought her success in so many arenas is something she'll now carry into a more certain chapter of her life.

"You ask any immigrant and they have a huge story behind their back, but you have to let it go at some point … not forget about it, but let it go," Golotyuk said. "I want to lead my simple life."

lurye@umdbk.com