Syracuse spends Thanksgiving at Leonid Yelin’s downtown apartment

During a meal last year, Syracuse players gathered as then-junior outside hitter Mariia Levanova plugged her phone into a speaker and cued up contemporary Russian pop music. With a football game playing in the background, she showed her American teammates Russian pop artists Elka, Gradusy and Vintage. Her teammates were intrigued and started to ask more about Russian culture and language.

Syracuse head coach Leonid Yelin overheard as Levanova told her teammates “дерьмо,” (der’mo) the Russian word for sh*t.

“What are you telling them?” Yelin asked.

“They asked me to teach them the word,” Levanova said. “It was funny.”

For much of Yelin’s coaching career, he has hosted a Thanksgiving celebration for his team at his house. Players from all different countries come together to share aspects of their culture, from food to music. Syracuse’s (16-7, 12-3 Atlantic Coast) final three games take place over the academic break, when the majority of the SU campus is vacant. In his time at Syracuse, Yelin has hosted his annual Thanksgiving dinner in his downtown Syracuse apartment. He provides his players with a Thanksgiving experience, no matter if they’re American or not.

“It’s always an open invitation to my house,” Yelin said. “Some kids have nowhere to go.”

The tradition began when Yelin was the head coach at Louisville. Yelin is an Uzbekistani immigrant, so he makes sure to recruit at least a few European players every year, he said. On one Thanksgiving in the mid 1990s, Yelin decided to show them how Americans experienced the holiday. For Americans with nowhere to celebrate, he provided them a home for the night.

When Yelin retired from Louisville and was hired at Syracuse, it continued.

Every year, Yelin hosts “seven or eight” players for dinner, Levanova said. His wife, Yelena, does the majority of the cooking. She prepares traditional Thanksgiving foods like turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, and stuffing, as well as pelmeni: a Russian dumpling filled with minced meat (pork, lamb, beef, fish or chicken) and mushrooms.

Last year, Levanova and the seven others arrived at Yelin’s apartment early. They worked with Yelena to prepare the turkey, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, cornbread and baklava: a European and Asian delicacy layered with nuts, syrup and honey.

Yelin’s annual Thanksgiving gathering is more than just a holiday to Levanova. A native of Saint Petersburg, Russia, she doesn’t really care about Thanksgiving. In fact, she only started celebrating it three years ago. Many players who went in 2016, Valelly said, hadn’t experienced it before. But to Levanova, it’s about spending time with her teammates.

“We always see each other on the court,” Levanova said. “Coming back and to have dinner, it’s much more relaxing.”