It was a Sunday morning inside the boxing studio at Middlebury Fitness, where Diana Herasim had just gotten a membership. She had been there for more than an hour, pounding the hell out of a punching bag. The 15-year-old exchange student from Ukraine came to America in August to attend Middlebury Union High School for her junior year and live with a host family. Out of 10,000 applicants worldwide, Herasim was one of only 200 students who won a prestigious Future Leaders Exchange Program scholarship. She had heard about the program several years ago and asked her mom whether she could work toward applying, which involved learning English. Her mom supported her 100 percent. “For me, as a little girl in Ukraine who doesn’t have many opportunities — not more than my peers — it sounded like a dream and a fairy tale,” Herasim told Seven Days in a filmed interview at the boxing studio last month. “The person who comes here for one year all alone should be really strong mentally and, well, for me, physically.” Her brother, who’s now 25 and her best friend, introduced her to boxing last year. While growing up in Kherson, a city in the south of Ukraine, she was “the weakest girl” in her elementary school grade, she said, and struggled through physical education classes. As her gloved fists landed thundering blows on a punching bag in Middlebury and her long brown ponytail swished fiercely, Herasim hardly appeared ever to have been weak. But her first days in the boxing ring were merciless, she said. “I don’t like losing. It made me hungry to come back and to take the revenge with myself,” Herasim said. “You know the feeling when you actually fight yourself and when you win the fight with yourself — it is the moment when you’re proud. It is addictive to win and overcome your obstacles and weaknesses.” The sport has been a therapeutic release in the moments between phone calls with her family following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. Her father is currently stuck in her hometown, which is fully occupied by Russia. Her brother, sister-in-law and maternal grandparents were able to flee to a different state in Ukraine they thought was safer. But the bombs soon followed. Eventually, they had no water or power. They were forced to drink water from the river. …