Established : August 26, 2005

Boris Denysewych moved from Dnipropetrovsk to Montreal in the mid 1940's after the Second World War, and along with other new Ukrainian Canadians, established a club in Montreal called Dnipro, which was later changed to S.A. Ukraina. This club in Montreal went on to achieve great things, including a National Championship winning the Dominion Carling Cup in 1957.

Boris Denysewych passed away in 1998 leaving his grandson Marc Lapointe with photographs and newspaper articles of the great Montreal Ukraina team. The idea of creating a Ukrainian team in Ottawa floated around in his head for years, until 2005 when long time friend Andriy Popowych joined Marc and together they started to generate ideas.

Over the course of many months, and a lot of tedious work trying to establish a club and attempting to generate interest within the Ukrainian community, an opportunity arose. The Ottawa Royals Soccer Club, and the endless kindness of Jane Dennis, were gracious enough to give Marc and Andriy an opening to found a new team.

The Ukraina Royals were born. The challenge now, was to establish contacts and recruit players for the newly found team.

General Isidore Popowych (Andriy's father) provided the first contact, Lucien Kulic, the current manager of the S.A. Ukraina team in Montreal. He provided advice to Marc on how to run a Ukrainian team successfully and the advice was greatly appreciated.

The initial recruiting for the Ukraina Royals was simple enough yet limited, as we had Marc Lapointe and Andriy Popowych already signed. Next to come was the signing of Andriy's enthusiastic and patriotic younger brother Danilo Popowych. The fourth signing made was Andriy Szkwarek, Marc's teammate from a previous season. As the recruiting campaign continued, Marc's good friend Alex Zaslavsky was signed up as our fifth signing. Sergiy Kovalenkov, another former teammate of Marc's, was the sixth member to join the team. While Marc was busy recruiting former teammates, Andriy was securing the signature of his older brother Mike Popowych on a part time basis as he resides in Toronto, and his cousin Alex Popowych.

With five full time and three part time players now on the books, yet another obstacle arose. The recruiting of new players came to a stand still. With endless e-mails being sent around to Ukrainian Churches, businesses, and clubs, the responses were VERY limited. With Andriy having access to a very important and well established member of the Ukrainian community, his mother, Mrs. Dania Popowych who went to work and provided us with an absolutely essential contact. This contact was Mrs. Irena Bell.

This pivitol contact was kind enough to advertise our new team in the monthly Ukrainian Events Calender as well as advertise the team on the weekly Ukrainian radio station. Once the Events Calender was sent out to the large mailing list, the results were fantastic. First to come was Walter Usyk who was signed as the sixth full time player. Next to come was Andrij Hlutchowecky who became the seventh full time Ukraina Royals player. Kenny Porter-Ivanchuk was full time signing number eight. The ninth full time player to commit was Bohdan Kaluzny. Eric Lapointe (Marc's older brother) was our next signing putting our team into double digits at 10. The Ottawa Ukraina Royals continued their efforts signing new players, and the efforts paid off when Taras Figol was signed as the eleventh full time player. The events Calender distributed by Dr. Irene Bell continued to pay dividends. Diana Sharypkin received the calender and notified husband Constantin Sharypkin of the team. Constantin was signed as our twelfth full time player. Next to come was Andriy Sawchuk. He was signed up as our thirteenth full time player. Mark Shwed was then signed up as our fourth part time player to make seventeen Ukraina Royals in total. Nearing the end of the season, Scott Makischuk moved to Ottawa and was recruited by Andriy Szkwarek to play for Ukraina. He was signed right at the deadline to make 18 Ottawa Ukraina players. Two more late signings were made at the deadline when John Udell committed to playing for Ukraina as did the brother of Scott, Luke Makischuk. That brought the total to 20 players.

This group of players are the beginning of the Club and will be remembered as the first ever Ukraina Royals team in Ottawa history.