In this month’s What’s Up student column, Julia Zlatkova, EUSA Vice President for Student Engagement, Youth and Volunteers, reflects on university sport as a life-changer, highlighting its impact on personal growth, inclusion, opportunities, and the development of lifelong connections and skills.

I spent most of my life chasing hundredths of a second. As an alpine skier in the Bulgarian National Ski Team, I competed at World Championships, World Junior Championships, Youth Olympic Games and many more races across the World. Over 50 professional podiums and 25 Golds. Thousands of training days. A life defined by discipline, sacrifice, and the relentless pursuit of performance. Then, in 2023, I stopped.

Leaving a professional career is never easy. It is a transition that many former elite athletes struggle with - a sudden absence of structure, purpose, and the identity that sport had built around you since childhood. I was no different.

But I had something that helped anchor me through that transition: University. I had actually started my studies at the Technical University of Sofia while still competing professionally - balancing training camps and race circuits with lectures and deadlines for over a year.

Engineering Design was never a fallback, it was a genuine passion I had chosen to pursue alongside my athletic career. So when I finally stepped away from professional sport, studying kept me focused, gave me structure in a moment that could easily have felt like freefall.

Then my university did something that changed my worldview: they sent me to the EUSA Winter Championships in Val di Zoldo, 2023.

I have to be honest. When I arrived at the EUSA Winter Championships that December, I went with the mindset of someone who had raced at the highest level. University sport, I assumed, would be a quieter version of what I already knew. A farewell lap. I was completely wrong.

What I found on that mountain was something I hadn't felt since a kid: pure joy from the sport I have practice my whole life. My brother and I competed together - he won the European Universities title, and I became European Vice Champion in slalom. But the medals were almost secondary. What struck me was the atmosphere around the competition. Students from across the continent, each representing their university, sharing the same passion, the same nerves, the same post-race laughter in the finish area. There was no sponsorship pressure, no national federation politics - just athletes who loved their sport, had fun, and a European community that gathered in its name. I felt what EUSA truly represents. And I wanted more of it.

Professional sport teaches you to win. It teaches you to endure. But it rarely teaches you to simply belong - to be part of a community of peers who compete not for fame or rankings, but for the love of movement and the nature.

EUSA events offer something that elite sport often cannot: a space where sport and education genuinely meet. Where a future engineer from Bulgaria can race against a psychology student from Poland and a medical student from Italy, and walk away not just with a result, but with friendships, perspectives, and a renewed sense of what sport is actually for.

That experience made me see university sport with entirely new eyes. Not as a lesser version of professional competition - but as its own powerful, meaningful world, with the potential to shape young people far beyond the finish line.

That revelation set me on a new path. I started thinking about how I could give back - how my experience as a pro athlete could serve something larger than personal performance. So I started supporting the university sport on a national level and in 2025, I was nominated by my NUSA to run in the EUSA elections. I won the position of Student Representative in the Executive Committee and became the voice of the European student-athletes. By investing the energy and passion from professional sport to my new mission, In 2026, I became EUSA Vice President for Student Engagement, Youth and Volunteers.

None of this was part of any plan I had as a teenager racing down the icy slopes. But it grew naturally from one honest moment at a university championship - a moment when I remembered why I fell in love with sport in the first place.

If you are a former athlete, or a current one, wondering what comes next - I want to tell you something directly: your experience has enormous value, and education is not the end of your athletic identity. It is where that identity grows into something richer.

And if you are a student who has never competed but loves the sport, EUSA is for you just as much. These championships, games, and events are not just about medals. They are about building confidence, friendships, and the understanding that you are more than one thing at once: an athlete and a thinker, a competitor and a student, a representative of your country and a citizen of Europe.

Europe is stronger when its young people move, learn, compete, and connect across borders. University sport is one of the most beautiful ways to make that happen.

I know, because I lived it - on the slopes, in the university, and now in the Executive Committee of EUSA.

Julia Zlatkova is from Bulgaria, a 23-year-old former member of the Bulgarian National Ski Team and European Universities Winter Vice Champion (Slalom, 2023). She studies Engineering Design at the Technical University of Sofia and currently serves as EUSA Vice President for Student Engagement, Youth and Volunteers. Are you a student with an opinion? EUSA is looking for contributors for the What's Up column every month. Contact stc@eusa.eu to share a piece or propose a topic.