Swedish student-athletes who participated in Orienteering at the FISU World University Championship in FinlandThe Swedish Student Sport Federation (SAIF) was founded in 1913 by individuals from the biggest universities in Sweden. Today, Astrid Wetterström is the President of SAIF (pictured below), and in the interview she described that SAIF currently has 98 member associations and around 44,000 student members after Covid-19.
Therefore, the focus right now for SAIF is to support and help the associations to find new members. Wetterström explained that “This is a big challenge that the students haven´t been at the universities, because they have been in their hometown[s] and that many students have had lectures on distance. [In] addition to that there are also the restrictions.” As an example, SAIF can support the associations by helping to organise activities and events, as well as supporting other needs of all the associations.
The Swedish Student Sport Federation has developed “Strategy 2026,” which represents their long-term goals. The purpose of the strategy is that more students will find and join student sport and will be a part of the student sport community. The strategy is divided into three categories. The first one is called “our perspective at competition,” where the goal is to have competitions at every competition level. The second one is “safe sport” which outlines that sport is for everyone, that the people involved demonstrate good leadership, and that student sport is included in many areas. The third category is “collaboration,” which means that we are doing this together and, for example, in collaboration with other special sport federations and with the universities. However, on the way to achieving this long-term goal, SAIF has short-term goals that they will work on, with the purpose to reaching the goal of Strategy 2026.
Every year, the Swedish Student Sport Federation has different activities and events planned. For example, they organise the Swedish championship for students and Studentiaden. The Swedish student championship takes place in different cities in Sweden depending on which association wants to plan the championship. Every championship is unique since it is only organised for one sport at a time. Therefore, there are usually a couple of Swedish student championships every year. Different from the championships, the Studentiaden takes place at the same location every year. The purpose of Studentiaden is for students to compete against each other on the level of the student’s ambitions. Therefore, everyone can join, from beginners to more serious players, in an event that is just for fun.
Students can also compete in international competitions that SAIF is a part of. Students, therefore, have the opportunity to travel the world and compete at an elite level in different international championships and tournaments. SAIF also organises international events in Sweden where they always have good collaboration with other Swedish special sport federations and local partners. However, that can be a very long process, and the last time Sweden planned an international world championship for students it was only for triathlon and rowing athletes.
The International Day of University Sport (IDUS) was celebrated for a couple of days around 20th of September. Wetterström described that there are many associations that were to celebrate IDUS at a local level with different activities and events. Wetterström´s expectations for IDUS 2021 were “that we will meet many new students that haven´t come in contact to the student sport life and that they will join our community”.
Ultimately, Swedish student sport is about having fun and exercising together with other students. But also, it is to provide the opportunity to compete at different levels depending on the student’s ambition level.