Founded just ten years ago, the Federación Universitaria de Deportes de Costa Rica (FEDEU) is the governing body of Costa Rican university sport and is comprised of 15 member universities—a large number for a country of its size. FISU Student Ambassador, Marco Barquero sat down with FEDEU President, Gerardo Corrales to find out more about the work of the federation.
According to Corrales, FEDEU continues to aim for representation of Costa Rican university sport whenever possible, but already sees its athletes on track to compete on the world stage at the Chengdu 2021 FISU World University Games. In terms of sport hosting, Costa Rica has 2022 marked as a busy year on their calendar, with the National Sports Games, the Central American University Sports Games and the organisation of the FISU World Forum all in the same year.
For the development of FEDEU, communication with students has drastically improved over the years. Social networks, emails and instant messaging are just some of the ways that the federation finds itself communicating with students on a regular basis. The information communicated is also becoming increasingly relevant to university sport, both on a national and international level. At the same time, students are constantly informed of ongoing events in their university sport communities, calling it a “massification” university sport in the country.
At the core of their aim for university sport, FEDEU is making stride in areas of environmental impacts, healthy university communities and gender equality. Highlighting gender equality, Corrales mentioned that the participation of both men and women is important and strongly considered when supporting an equal balance in genders when hosting multiple events.
Overall, FEDEU is growing ever so rapidly from involving athletes at FISU events, to holding more university sports events themselves and even hosting the FISU World Forum in 2022. Together with FISU America, FEDEU is growing ever so quickly, using sport performance, education and development to take university sport even higher for Costa Rica.