Madeleine Fenech

What are the main aims of the Malta University Sports Club?

MUSC is founded on the principle of mens sana in corpore sano. Our vision is to help students lead a more active and healthy lifestyle. We consider sports as a vital part of the holistic approach of being a student. Our aim is to target all university students, from the inactive to the elite athletes, and to provide each one with an adequate opportunity to grow in sports.

Moreover, our ambitions are manifested and implemented through the work of a team of students, who despite not being sports administration professionals, have gathered the appropriate knowledge and expertise of how to operate and run the organisation. We have achieved this through international experience and on the model of various other, established European and international sports organisations.

What role does sports play in any student’s life?

MUSC draws in students by reminding them that practising a sport isn’t only intended for successful athletes, but is beneficial, fun, and an intrinsic part of being a student. Practising a sport helps students stay fit, reduce stress, keep a healthy mind and is also a different way of socialising.

Practising a sport helps students stay fit and reduce stress

MUSC approaches groups of students who have different sporting proficiencies in unique and specialised ways in order to draw in every type of student. Through events like Sports Fest we ensure that every student’s taste in sports is reached as it is a showcase of various sports and students can try various disciplines at the comfort of their own university.

In this way, MUSC reaches out to new students in order to show them that it is easier than they thought to be a student and to also practise a sport and keep fit.

How do you help students in practising their favourite sport?

MUSC is affiliated with many clubs and associations in Malta which help us in their respective sport. Anyone who is interested in a particular sport can contact us and we can send them to these same clubs where they can ­practise their sport. This has proven to be very popular with international students who practise a sport at home and wish to continue doing so during their stay in Malta. We also organise tournaments and we have our own university futsal and table tennis teams, both of which compete in the national league.

What facilities do you give students access to?

The university boasts a number of sports facilities such as an indoor pavilion for basketball, handball, table tennis and more. There are two newly renovated football five-a-side pitches and a running track, which has been covered in asphalt.

The Malta Sport Council owns the national pool and squash courts and there is also the new and improved Kinetika Gym at the national pool complex. Access to these facilities is offered at a reduced student rate.

Do most students practise sports at an amateur level or are there also students who pursue sports at a higher level?

Most students stop pursuing sports professionally once they enter university due to the fact that they are discouraged with the load of work that university entails. Perhaps even lecturers tend to dissuade students to stop extracurricular activities. However we have come to realise that being a student athlete also has its perks, as it helps with time management. There are a number of students who are elite athletes who we’ve also given the opportunity to compete in the Universiades.

The Maltese delegation at the Universiades.

You also support participation in international events. What are these events and how do they raise MUSC’s profile?

We mainly take part in two university games: the Universiades, which are international games for university athletes organised by FISU, and the European University Games, organised by EUSA. These games are very important as they give us an opportunity to showcase the university’s talent, as well as that of MCAST and other tertiary education institutions.

The Universiades are very high-ranking games and in fact they are the second largest multi-sport event in the world after the Olympic Games. In the last edition held in Kazan, Russia, 10,442 ­athletes from 162 countries participated and Malta fielded a ­contingent of seven athletes and two officials.

In this year’s edition of the European University Games we participated with two table tennis teams, one from the University of Malta and one from MCAST.

What are the challenges for the 2014/15 term?

Currently we are gearing up for Freshers’ Week which is our busiest week of the year. We’ve finalised our list of events for this year which we somehow always manage to extend, as new ideas pop up over the course of the year.

This year we have changed the structure of our organisation. We now have five different offices in order to facilitate our operations: administration, a local office, an international office, a media and marketing office, and a finance ­office. We have also changed our logo and branding identity to complement this change in MUSC.

The biggest challenge which lies ahead is the Universiades, which will be held in South Korea. They are an enormous expense for us, but the opportunity these games give our student athletes is huge. They are the highest-ranking games which some athletes will ever have the chance to go to. Nothing beats the feeling of walking into a stadium with 45,000 people cheering you on.