Last year’s gold medallists Luxembourg and Cyprus will be trying to further 
cement their supremacy in the Small Countries Division (SCD) of the CEV Volleyball European Championships when starting their campaign in the 2017 edition of the men’s and women’s competition, respectively.
The 2017 edition of the SCD Championships will feature seven men’s and eight women’s teams.
The qualification stage for the finals which are due to follow in 2017 will be played later this year with the participating teams playing a single round-robin in one of two preliminary pools. These tournaments will count as part of the first round of the qualification process for the 2018 FIVB Men’s and Women’s Volleyball World Championships.
The pool composition for the qualification stage has been determined using the serpentine system, following the standing of the 2015 championship.
Men
Pool A: Luxembourg, (org.), Faroe Islands, Northern Ireland
Pool B: Cyprus, Scotland, Iceland, (org), Andorra
The finals will be taking place in 2017 in Iceland. Reykjavik hosted the 2015 edition of the Games of the Small States of Europe (GSSE) where Luxembourg topped the final charts before doing the same only a few weeks later at the SCD Finals held in the Grand Duchy where the ‘Lions’ beat arch-rivals Cyprus to add another gold medal to their collection.
Women
Pool A: Cyprus, Faroe Islands (org.), Liechtenstein, Ireland
Pool B: Scotland, Luxembourg (org.), Iceland, Northern Ireland
The final stage of the competition will be taking place in 2017 in Luxembourg.
A separate section has been added to the CEV website focussing specifically on the SCD Championships. Click here to retrieve further details and information.
SCD U19 Women / U20 Men Championships
The rising stars of the Small Countries Division will take the court already in late March / early April for the final stage of the SCD U19 Women / U20 Championships.
The U19 women’s competition will be played as a Round Robin, with each team playing each other team once. The event will be taking place in Scotland and feature – apart from the hosts – also the national teams of Cyprus, Faroe Islands, Luxembourg and Northern Ireland.
Six teams – Cyprus, Faroe Islands, Luxembourg, Northern Ireland, Scotland and San Marino – have entered the U20 men’s championship which will be taking place in Cyprus.There will be two pools of three teams, with all teams within each pool playing each other once on Day 1. The following day the 1st placed teams from each pool will qualify directly to the semi-finals, while the 2nd and 3rd from each pool will cross over and play a Playoff match to determine the other team in the semi-finals. On Day 3 the losers of the Playoff matches will play against each other, followed by the semi-final losers and eventually the semi-final winners in the Final.
Scotland and Luxembourg are the defending champions after winning U20 men’s and U19 women’s gold in 2014.