Zhenya Kolpakova was born and grew up in the Dnipropetrovsk region of Ukraine, though she moved to Mansfield in 2005 with her mother and sister.
She told WFAA, "My mom's friends at the time, they won, like, a lottery raffle visa, and so they moved their family to the United States, and they met a really great guy here that they thought my mom would really like. So they introduced them, and eventually he proposed, and we moved to the United States."
While trying to fit into her new surroundings, Kolpakova found a new passion in the drill team, which led her to eventually discovering a new passion while she was a student at Texas A&M: joining the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.
On her initial audition she didn't make the squad, she vowed to audition again and make the team.
However, life and a career got in the way, until the war in Ukraine started.
"Whenever the war started in Ukraine, I was talking to my grandma, and she was telling me how you can't live your life with regrets," Kolpakova said. "You got to just go for it. You never know what's going to happen."
At 30, she finally made it through to the second round, but that's when disaster struck.
She was sitting near a campfire celebrating her sister's recent college graduation, when a freak explosion left her whole body engulfed in flames. ""It landed right on my legs, and my whole body caught on fire," she recalled.
Doctors told her she was lucky she didn't go blind or even suffocate. Kolpokova essentially had to learn to walk, and dance, all over again.
Eventually, the tryouts resumed and nothing was going to stop Kolpokova from pursuing her passion.
The DCC let her to submit a video for her second round of tryouts instead of performing in person and come the finals, Kolpokova thought there was no way she would advance. Her body was wrapped in bandages, her hair was singed, and she had no eyebrows.
"I was like, this is just a wild card. There's no way. I just went because I said, if I didn't go, then how do I know what would have happened?" Kolpakova said. "So I just wrapped up my legs, wrapped up my wounds, took some ibuprofens and went, drew on some eyebrows, put on some fake eyelashes, and went."
To her surprise, she made it!
"Whenever they called my number, I was in shock," she said. "I was like, this is not like my place. I'm injured. I don't know how quickly I'm going to heal. And I don't know that they knew that either. I think they were just hoping, trying to give me a chance."
The first person she called when she made the squad? Her grandmother.
"In moments like this, with what's happening in Ukraine, any good news is just making her day a little bit better," Kolpakova said.
When she took the field for the first time as a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader, her family was on her mind.
"I saw my mom waving in the stands, and I felt this wave of love from my family overtake me. And I almost started crying as I'm trying to, like, the music is playing, I'm supposed to walk out on the field, and I'm getting emotional," she said.
As if this story isn't amazing enough, Kolpakova says her grandmother will be visiting in December to watch her perform on Christmas Eve under the bright stadium lights of AT&T Stadium!
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