Softball Europe held a meeting known as the Softball Europe Window during the annual WBSC Europe Congress on 11-13 February in Ljubljana, .jpg)
Slovenia, and pools and seedings were announced for the European Championships to be held this summer.
Pools were announced for the three major Women’s Fastpitch Championships and final entrants were announced for the European Under-23 Men’s Fastpitch Championship, which will be a Qualifier for the first WBSC Under-23 Men’s World Cup to be held in October 2022.
Final entrants were also announced for the European Men’s Slowpitch Championship and the European Co-ed Slowpitch Championship, which will be a Qualifier for the first-ever WBSC Co-ed Slowpitch World Cup for national teams, planned for 2023.
In all cases, pools and seedings were based on current standings and rankings.
European Senior Women’s Championship
The European Senior Women’s Championship, with 22 countries entered, will be held from 24-30 July in Sant Boi, Spain, just outside Barcelona.
The GB Women’s Team, despite being one of the top teams in Europe over many years, has been seeded 15th based on the fact that, for Covid-related reasons, we did not take part when this competition was played in 2021.
This will have consequences, because the Senior Women’s Championship, based on an agreement reached by Softball Europe in 2020, is now being run in a new way.
The groups for the tournament, based mainly on how teams finished at the 2021 Women’s European Championship, are shown below. Teams that did not participate in 2021 have been ranked below those that did.
Pool A: Italy, Russia, Poland, Ireland, and Belgium
Pool B: Netherlands, Germany, Croatia, Great Britain, and Greece
Pool C: Czech Republic, France, Austria, Denmark, Switzerland, and Malta
Pool D: Israel, Spain, Ukraine, Slovakia, Turkey, and Finland
Under the new format for this tournament, the eight top-ranked teams – the first two teams in each pool – are guaranteed a place in the second round.
So the first round of the tournament will have two stages:
Stage 1: The top two teams in each pool will play each other to establish seeding: Italy v Russia, Netherlands v Germany, Czech Republic v France and Israel v Spain.
Stage 2: The remaining teams in each pool will play a round-robin, with only the round-robin winner going up to join the top eight and create a 12-team second round. For GB, in Pool B, this will mean a round-robin with Croatia and Greece, with the winner progressing.
After this first round, the top 12 teams will split into two six-team round-robin groups, and the top three teams from these groups will progress to a final six-team round-robin, with results from the second round carried forward.
Rankings in this final round-robin will determine who plays in the gold medal game, the bronze medal game and a fifth-place playoff game.
Meanwhile, the 10 teams that did not make the top 12 after the first round will have a series of placing games over the rest of the week.
The three medal-winning teams from this tournament will progress to Group Stage qualifiers for the next WBSC Women’s World Cup, to be held in 2023, with 18 teams from around the world playing in three six-team groups. The World Cup Finals, involving just eight teams, will be played in 2024, and will involve the top two teams from each Group Stage qualifier plus the host team (if not otherwise qualified) and one or two wild card teams that were the best third-place finishers from the Group Stage competitions.
European Under-22 Women’s Championship
The European Under-22 Women’s Championship, with 18 countries entered, will be held from 27 June through 2 July in Kunovice in the Czech Republic.
This tournament will be played under traditional rules: the top teams in each pool will not be guaranteed a place in the second round.
The GB Under-22 Team has been seeded fourth, based on their finish when this tournament was last played in 2018, which means that GB will head one of the four round-robin groups that will play the first round.
Two teams from each group will advance to further playoff rounds.
The groups are:
Pool A: Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Germany, and Croatia
Pool B: Netherlands, Belgium, Ukraine, Spain, and Sweden
Pool C: Ireland, Czech Republic, Israel, and France
Pool D: Great Britain, Russia, Austria, and Hungary
European Under-15 Women’s Championship
The European Under-15 Women’s Championship, with 11 countries entered, will be held from 18-23 July in Enschede in The Netherlands.
The GB Under-15 Team has been seeded 10th because the team did not take part in the last competition for what was then an Under-16 age group, played in 2019.
No teams In this tournament will be guaranteed a place in the second round; instead, three teams from each of two round-robin groups will go forward to Championship playoff rounds.
The groups are:
Pool A: Netherlands, Russia, Germany, Croatia, and Poland
Pool B: Italy, Czech Republic, Ukraine, France, Great Britain, Lithuania
European Under-23 Men’s Fastpitch Championship
The first-ever European Under-23 Men’s Fastpitch Championship, with only four countries entered, will be held from 6-9 July in Sezimovo Usti, Czech Republic, and will be a Qualifier for the first WBSC Under-23 Men’s World Cup, to be held this October in Argentina.
The teams are, in seeding order:
1 – Czech Republic
2 – Denmark
3 – Israel
4 – Great Britain
The teams will play a double round-robin, with the teams finishing first and second playing the gold medal game and the other two teams playing the bronze medal game.
The gold and silver medal winners will qualify for the World Cup.
European Men’s Slowpitch Championship
There are eight entrants for the 2022 European Men’s Slowpitch Championship, to be played from 14-18 June in Colorno, Italy.
The GB Men’s Slowpitch Team won the inaugural edition of this event, played in 2018, and will be seeded first.
The tournament will start with just one round-robin group containing all nine teams, seeded as follows:1 – Great Britain
2 – Germany
3 – Netherlands
4 – Czech Republic
5 – Italy
6 – Belgium
7 – Ireland
8 – Slovenia
European Co-ed Slowpitch Championship
Nine entrants have been confirmed for the 2022 European Co-ed Slowpitch Championship, to be played from 12-16 July in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
The GB Co-ed Slowpitch Team won the gold medal when this event was last played in 2019 and will be seeded first.
The tournament will start with just one round-robin group containing all nine teams, seeded as follows:
1 – Great Britain
2 – Germany
3 – Ireland
4 – Czech Republic
5 – Netherlands
6 – Belgium
7 – Austria
8 – Serbia
9 -- Slovenia