Young girls and boys from different countries break cultural barriers through swimming in Kosovo.
It’s evening on January 30, and swimming trainers in a pool of a Pristina’s suburb are ready to prepare their young swimmers with swim caps and goggles.
Swimmers begin with some warm-up exercises before going into the 25 meters long swimming pool.
Coach Elona Tovërlani said that swimming lessons often include youngsters from different countries and ethnic groups.
“Learning to swim at this center with swimmers from different communities and countries is very easy and we also explain in English so that it is easy for most of them to understand the exercises,” Tovërlani told Prishtina Insight.
Swimming has not always been popular in Kosovo, which is landlocked and lacks water resources. Swimming, as a sport, officially began in 1951 and continued until 1991, when it was forcibly banned by then-Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic’s regime shortly after Kosovo lost its autonomy.
Swimming coach Elona Tovërlani. Photo: BIRN
In the 1990s, Kosovo established its own swimming federation and in 1997 it organised its first swimming competitions.
Tovërlani added that “we also have children that are from the Netherlands, Ukraine, Bosnia and Serbia”.
This mix of nationalities in a swimming lesson has found place at STEP since it was formed in 2014, including children who learned to swimat an early age and regularly attend lessons for as long as four years in a row.
Children learn how to swim, create beautiful friendships, and learn to accept each other’s cultural differences through their lessons. Such is the case of Nina Humolli, a 12-year-old Albanian swimmer from Kosovo and her peer, Mete Hacıfazlıoğlu, from Turkey.
Hacıfazlıoğlu told Prishtina Insight that he does not feel any different “since I have lived here my whole life” .
Humolli learned how to swim when she was only two years old and Hacıfazlıoğlu when he was five. The two friends communicate in English and support each other in local and regional swimming competitions.
Hacıfazlıoğlu told Prishtina Insight that he won three gold medals in 2024 in freestyle, breaststroke, and butterfly at swimming competitions in Kosovo.
Like Hacıfazlıoğlu, Humolli excelled in the swimming competitions held in 2024 in North Macedonia.
“Once (in 2024) in North Macedonia for 50 freestyle I won third place. In the future I think I will go to the Olympiad (of swimming) and other competitions, maybe somewhere else in Europe, not only in North Macedonia and Kosovo,” Humolli said.
Nationalist Differences “hold no place in sports”
A swimming class at Step Sports Center in Prishtina. Photo: BIRN/Denis Sllovinja
Swimmers focus on improving their skills and friendships, and not on their differences.
Ten-year-old Miray Ece Doğan from Turkey likes swimming because it is fun and engaging.
“When you start, you wanna swim more,” Doğan says.
Doğan also started to learn swimming at five years old. She has been swimming at STEP Sports Center for a year, and she goes to swimming lessons eight times per month.
“They (swimming trainers) treat me really well, they explain everything. When I don’t understand them, they explain again,” Doğan told Prishtina Insight.
She wants to be a professional swimmer when she grows up.
Northern Irish swimmer, Ethan Mannis, who is eight years old, finds support from parents to swim as well.
Mannis also speaks English with the other swimmers.
A swimming class at Step Sports Center in Prishtina. Photo: BIRN/Denis Sllovinja
Tovërlani told Prishtina Insight that “especially swimmers who have been swimming with the same group for two or three years, now they socialize with each other, swim together, do exercises together. They have very good relations and feel accepted and friendly with each other.”
“On the contrary, they (parents) know that in sports this (nationality) is the least noticeable thing because the difference that is made between different nationalities holds no place in sports.”
“What makes me think that they had a good time here is that when they go for holidays in their home countries they always leave us cards where they write ‘thank you,’” she says about swimmers of different nationalities.
Tovërlani told Prishtina Insight that “games are incorporated into training so the children can develop confidence and feel accepted by each other via playing”.