More Than 220 Scholarships for Top-Level Athletes

“The job ad sounded as if there was a go-to person who could help solve all the problems I experienced during my university career.” That’s how Sarah Seidl starts telling the story of her early days as overall coordinator of the Elite Sports Scholarship Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region (SSMRN), which was still called Mannheim Sports Scholarship back in 2009. During her own studies in Heidelberg, she was a competitive athlete herself in artistic cycling – consistently faced with the challenge of reconciling her passion and her academic training.

To enable students like Seidl to pursue a dual career, the idea for the Mannheim Sports Scholarship was born 15 years ago. “The entrepreneur and former Olympic athlete Klaus Greinert and his family were instrumental in this,” says Seidl. At the time, they approached the President’s Office of the university with the idea of providing financial support to top-level athletes.

However, it quickly became clear that the students also needed help with organizing their lives as student athletes. That’s why, in the summer of 2009, the university created Seidl’s position, tasking her with the challenge of setting up the Mannheim Sports Scholarship. “In the beginning, it took a great deal of convincing. After all, higher education and competitive athletics are two separate systems in Germany. So the first step was to create mutual understanding on both sides.”

Over time, however, Seidl succeeded in establishing the scholarship and finding suitable scholarship recipients – not least thanks to the Greinert family, who continues to fund the SSMRN to this day. In 2018, the Dietmar Hopp Foundation became a second sponsor, making it possible to offer the scholarship at Heidelberg University as well. “That’s when we renamed the scholarship to reflect that change,” Seidl explains. A third partner university, the Mannheim Business School, was added in 2020.

Lending a sympathetic ear

For Seidl and her colleague Larissa Schilde, who has served as the University of Mannheim’s top-level sports officer since 2019, providing mental and organizational support is the top priority: “First and foremost, we are go-to persons for all kinds of problems.” Aside from always lending a sympathetic ear, this includes coordinating study and examination schedules with practice schedules and competitions or supporting students with their applications for internships or jobs. “We also organize separate tutorials for many top athletes if they miss multiple weeks of a semester due to training camps,” Schilde adds.

Over the past 15 years, the SSMRN has supported 226 students at the University of Mannheim, 56 of them in the past semester alone. “The scholarship is always granted for one year, after which the athletes may apply for a renewal,” says Seidl. “If they perform well, this means they can receive funding and support throughout their studies.”

And what are the plans for the future? “In this year, the Dieter Schwarz Foundation joined the program as our third sponsor,” Schilde says happily. “This means we will be able to offer the scholarship at three universities in Heilbronn beginning in the fall semester and hence also for additional degree programs.” And Seidl adds: “In the long term, we would love to include more universities in the metropolitan region – after all, we want to live up to our name.”