Sofia, Bulgaria, May 18, 2017. The very first edition of the CEV U16 Volleyball European Championship – Women will be reaching its climax later this summer with the Final Round taking place in Sofia and Samokov, Bulgaria on July 21-29, 2017. Everything is ready for a real Volleyball party featuring the most promising players in Europe following the Drawing of Lots held on Thursday morning in the Bulgarian capital under the supervision of CEV Board of Administration member, Mr Zdeslav Barac and European Sports Organising Commission (ESOC) member, Mr Slobodan Milosevic.
The competition will feature 12 teams, who will be starting their journey in the pool phase as follows:
Pool I in Sofia: Bulgaria, Finland, Italy, The Netherlands, Greece, Denmark
Pool II in Samokov: Turkey, Russia, Czech Republic, Belgium, Belarus, Romania
The top two teams from each pool will play crossed semi-finals before eventually vying for the top honours in the competition, whereas those that finish pool play in third and fourth place will contest the classification matches 5-8. The competition will culminate on Saturday, July 29 with the gold medal match, which will crown the first ever European champions in this age category.
Teams secured their participation in this continental premiere via a first round of qualifications organised by the respective Zonal Associations in 2016 and a second pan-European stage held in April 2017. The Drawing of Lots placed the 12 participating teams across two pools taking into consideration their results and performances throughout the qualification process, with Romania and Denmark being the last ones to book a ticket to Bulgaria after finishing as the best second-ranked teams across the four second-round qualifiers.
Bulgaria’s Volleyball legend Lyubomir Ganev helped draw the 12 participating teams across the two pools as he joined Bulgarian Volleyball Federation President Dancho Lazarov and Executive Director Stanislav Nikolov on the stage of the Drawing of Lots held in the Bulgarian capital.
A detailed match programme is available here.