Celebrating sport, fair play and diversity. 9th Interuniversity World Championships held in Rome

Football, futsal, tennis. The students of UWB brought back a lot of great and unforgettable experiences from the ninth Interuniversity World Championships, which took place in Rome, Italy, on 6-10 November. Students from different faculties were united again during the championship.

This year's global sporting event packed with competition was a bit unlucky for the representation of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, as Adriana Ujkanovičová from the Centre for Physical Education and Sport at the Faculty of Education of the University of West Bohemia said: "In the fight for the medals we pulled the short end of the rope twice, in the men's football competition and in the singles tennis competition played by Simona Kadlecová. The football players still took a great fourth place from Rome out of 29 teams entered, and so did Simona Kadlecová in the competition of 66 female tennis players. The futsal players easily advanced as the winners of the main group, where they defeated all three teams without receiving a goal. In the eighth round they beat the girls' team from Campus Bio-Medico from Italy."

Although the girls presented a compact game from the beginning of the tournament, in the quarter-final they were again stuck in the net of the later winners KU Leuven Falcons from Belgium 0:2. Out of the 27 teams, they finished in a tie for fifth to eighth place. Roman Vavřík, a student of the Centre of Physical Education and Sport of the Faculty of Education, went to the Italian capital in the colours of the sports programme Western Stars Pilsen.

The mission of the organisers of the IUSF (Interuniversities Sport Federation) is to unite all sports clubs, teams and sports sectors of universities worldwide and to coordinate and connect sporting and cultural initiatives between all universities. "The core value is to promote a fun and fair environment needed to ensure that students, professors, coaches, officials and administrators enjoy sports and stay connected. The goal is to celebrate college sports and promote the principles of fair play, diversity and inclusion. The events organized include sporting, social, educational and cultural activities that bring people together from different ethnic, cultural and geographic backgrounds. The sent athletes study at different faculties, but in sport they become one team," said Adriana Ujkanovičová.

This is the seventh time that the UWB team has participated in the Interuniversity Championship, and the representation was financially supported by the UWB Rector's Fund. The participation of female and male athletes contributes to the promotion of the University of West Bohemia abroad and to the establishment of cooperation with other schools and institutions, for example in the field of student mobility, science and research and international projects.