As war began, this half-Ukrainian teen ‘fell in love’ with football. Next stop: Boise State
Before the first early-morning chirps of house sparrows and Eurasian blackbirds were heard floating above Berlin’s rooftops, Daniil Starykh was awake and packing his bags in the dark, preparing for a long day ahead.
It was 5 a.m. on a weekday in the first half of 2022. Starykh lived a 90-minute drive from school, but before starting that journey, he had to get ready and quietly sneak out of the two-bedroom apartment he shared with seven other people.
The early-morning routine had been Starykh’s life for a couple of months by this point. He usually lived with just his mother. But for a few months, a small apartment in eastern Germany became a temporary refuge for his sister, two nieces and some family friends from Ukraine, who fled when Russia invaded in February 2022.
After school, Starykh had football to look forward to. It was an hour’s drive from school to practice, but that was fine. It meant less time in the cramped living quarters back home, and more time with a sport that was becoming a huge part of his life.
“We had no place for your own space,” Starykh recalled on a Zoom call with the Idaho Statesman in mid-October, the morning after Boise State football’s 28-7 road victory over Hawaii.
Kickoff for that Hawaii game was 5 a.m. in Germany. No problem — it’s not as if Starykh wasn’t already used to waking up that early.
He watched most of the first half — “After that, I was like, ‘the boys are gonna win,’” Starykh chuckled — before he had to hit the road for the nearly six-hour drive home from Cologne, where he’d been attending a 247 Sports football camp.
Starykh said “the boys” not just because he’s a Boise State fan, but also because he recently became one of them.
On Oct. 9, just days after attending Boise State’s 62-30 victory over Utah State, Starykh committed to playing football for the Broncos.
The 6-foot-4, 285-pound offensive lineman from Germany spent time in Ukraine as a child because of his Ukrainian mother. He’s been playing football only since 2021, but he’s become a versatile offensive lineman who was recruited to Boise State as a guard.
The past few years of this teenager’s life have been a hard-working journey for someone who hoped to escape the horrors and tribulations of the Russia-Ukraine war and create a story of opportunity and success.
Finding his own space
Football was never really on a young Starykh’s radar.
The only time Germans ever tuned in to watch A-merican football was for the Super Bowl — mostly just to watch the commercials and halftime show — Starykh told the Statesman. Germans have soccer to love and watch. Besides, Starykh personally was more into kickboxing.
(The NFL did add a foray into Germany two years ago for a regular season game, part of its International Games schedule, and played two games there in 2023. This year’s game is scheduled for Nov. 10, and the Germans might want to send it back: the New York Giants, 2-5 right now, vs. the Carolina Panthers, who are 1-6.)
Things changed for Starykh around the age of 16. One of his friends played American football at a local club; considering Starykh’s size, that friend invited him along.
So Starykh joined the Berlin Adler Football Club and became close with offensive line coach Yannik Rohrscheider, who played at Eastern Michigan from 2017 to 2019, as well as some American coaches at the club.
“You never hear anything about American football (in Germany),” Starykh said. “So basically, these coaches brought me the love (of the game). They spent a lot of time and detail on the sport, so I really fell in love with the sport.”
It was also at Berlin Adler that Starykh became good friends with Max Stege, who is now a sophomore defensive end at Boise State.
About a year after he joined the club, things really changed for Starykh. On the field, Berlin Adler had just lost a championship game. Off the field, his friend Stege was leaving for the United States to play at Boise State. Starykh took over as a leader on the team.
In his mother’s birth country, the violence from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was affecting Starykh over 1,100 miles away. His mother is Ukrainian and his father is German. Despite the family’s move to Berlin over a decade earlier, family friendships remained strong. So with war erupting, Starykh’s already tight apartment became even tighter, a result of Ukrainian friends seeking safety.
Football became the great distraction, the Boise State recruit said. It didn’t matter that he had to wake up at 5 a.m., spend hours traveling and get home after the sun had gone down.
Sleep, travel, school, travel, football, travel, sleep, repeat.
“Football brought me a little bit away,” Starykh said. “I had something to do. I could be outside for a long time.”
By the time the family friends were able to find their own place to live, Starykh’s heart belonged to the gridiron, and the path to the Treasure Valley was already being paved.
Starykh’s road to Boise State
As it turned out, Starykh wasn’t too bad as a leader.
Berlin Adler Football Club returned to the championship game it had lost in Stege’s final game and came out as winners.
And after just two years of playing football, Starykh realized he needed better competition to improve his game. He made the jump from playing under-19 football to playing at the men’s level, which eventually led to joining PPI Recruits, an organization that helps foreign recruits land football scholarships in America.
In a whirlwind, Starykh was now traveling to America’s football hotbeds. He attended football camps in Tennessee, Alabama and Florida, as well as a camp with the Georgia Bulldogs.
He’d received offers from several schools, including Appalachian State, Florida Atlantic and Western Kentucky. But nothing felt right.
Then, in May 2024, just one day before Starykh was getting ready to head back to Germany, he received a call from Boise State offensive line coach Tim Keane.
“On the call with Coach Keane, Max was on the phone telling me, ‘Hey, they want you, brother,’” Starykh recalled. “And that’s when it started.”
Starykh remained in contact with Boise State, after which an offer finally arrived. He flew to Boise for the first time in early October and got to watch the Broncos drop 599 yards of offense on Utah State.
“The atmosphere was great. They really blew up Utah State, and it was great to see how the offense is playing,” Starykh said. “We’ve been in some meetings here, and I just love how they coach, the mentality they have in the team, and how they develop guys.”
Starykh watched star junior running back Ashton Jeanty drop 186 rushing yards on the Aggies in just one half of play. He probably will never get to block for Jeanty, though. Starykh is part of the Class of 2025 but won’t arrive in Boise until January 2026, meaning he won’t play until the 2026 season.
But for Starykh, the long wait is not the worst thing. He has more space now, his sister and nieces having found their own apartment in Germany. And he’s hoping to bring his mother, Nina, to Boise when he comes. They are struggling, however, to get her a foreign visa, because of issues linked to the Russia-Ukraine war and her Ukrainian background. The 14 months between now and when Starykh starts at Boise State affords them time to resolve things.
“I’m just really excited to be at Boise,” Starykh said. “I can’t wait to finish school and get ready to be on The Blue.”
This story was originally published October 24, 2024 at 4:41 PM.
