Centro Universitario Sportivo di Padova

CUS Padova is the Sport Association of the University of Padova. Since 1946, it has been promoting sport activities as essential cultural and educational mean for students, trainers and university staff to develop transversal and integrated skills and it has been supporting the practice and the diffusion of physical education as part of amateur sports.
In the development of its activities, CUS Padova benefits of the sponsorship of several University Departments and it works within the following networks: CUSI (Italian University Sports Centre), FISU (International University Sports Federation) and EUSA (European University Sports Association).
CUS Padova is one of the best-structured sport organization of the territory with 5.000 members enrolled, of which 900 athletes, 1.400 students playing amateur sports and several people playing a variety of leisure activities. CUS Padova manages two sport facilities with twelve sections of competitive sports: Athletics, Rugby, Field hockey, Fencing, Greco-roman wrestling, Judo, Cross-country skiing, Tennis, Triathlon, Gliding, Basketball and Wheelchair basketball.
CUS Padova fosters children, youth and adult education through cultural courses. It supplies services for schools, implementing at the local level research and training programmes to develop active citizenship and leadership of young people. It organises socio-cultural initiatives and leisure activities in favour of the shareholders, members and participants enrolled. It carries out training projects for technicians, sport managers and students as well as for disadvantaged people. It especially organises sport activities for disabled people: the first University Italian wheelchair basketball team plays here. Finally, it supports training of trainers’ programmes for social inclusion of disables, like sign languages courses.
Since 1988, it has been promoting international and national events of amateur and competitive sport and, in its sports facilities, European and International students’ exchanges take place every year. The most famous tournaments regularly organised at CUS Padova are the “Ludi del Bo”, where students of the University of Padova and Vicenza can compete in a great variety of athletic disciplines like volleyball, basketball, futsal, dances, ultimate Frisbee, tennis, gliding, tamburello and chess; and the “National University Championships”, where athletes representing CUS Padova have won a total of 25 medals for the year 2017.
In 2014, CUS Padova started working within the EU funded Programmes (Erasmus+ and Horizon2020), especially in the field of youth and sport. This new experience gave it the opportunity to get in contact with many European organisations working in its same field of interest and to start new and fruitful collaborations. Thanks to the cooperation of the University of Padova, it has broadened its activity toward research on sport and non-formal education for the development of projects supporting the educational role of sport, particularly for the development of entrepreneurial skills and transversal competences of youth. Furthermore, it has elaborated in-depth research on adapted sport for disable people; on the importance of both mental and physical wellbeing; and on the field of sport tourism.