Penza, 19 July 2016. PenzaNews. Merging of two universities – the Penza State Pedagogical University named after V. G. Belinsky and the Penza State University – negatively affected the development of student sports in the region. This opinion was expressed by the head of the regional Ministry of Sports Grigory Kabelsky.

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“We win the World Universiades, but basically we do not have student sports. There are big problems with it,” he said during the meeting with the sports core group on Tuesday, July 19.

The minister added that previously teams of the two universities competed but now there is no need for this.

“There were two great universities – polytechnic and pedagogical, they were integrated, and it turns out that the sporting interest disappeared,” Grigory Kabelsky said.

He noted that smaller universities cannot cover all kinds of sports and they send teams to competitions knowing that they will not be able to show good results in different directions.

“That means they have certain traditions: some plays mini-football, [others have] volleyball teams. It is just that the problem here is big. […] And so they start: we don’t need this kind of sport, we don’t want that one,” the minister said.

According to Grigory Kabelsky, the approach to solving the problem in the student sports should be changes at the highest level.