Schwaig

Gábor Csontos came through the Schwaig youth system in 1979, went on to win the CEV Cup with Moerser SC in 1990 and was named German Volleyball Player of the Year in 1987. Schwaig itself grew out of the general sports club founded on 1 April 1933; volleyball only arrived there in 1967, when the section played its first official match on 16 November that year, the date the club now counts as the sport's beginning at SV Schwaig.

The team has spent most of its life in Bavaria's own competitions, and the Bavarian Cup has been its stage more than any other: ten titles stretch from 1990 through to 1992, then a run in the mid-2000s, and three straight wins in 2022, 2023 and 2024. Bavarian championships in 1986 and 1992 pushed the club further up the pyramid, and in 2013 a runner-up finish in the 3. Liga (East) brought promotion to the 2. Bundesliga, finishing as South division vice-champions in both 2017 and 2018.

Franconia is not a large volleyball region, and the derby between Schwaig and the CERATONIA Volleys is the one meeting each season where the standings matter less than the postcode.

Players such as Alexander Mühlbauer, Luca Russelmann and Joshua Schneider passed through the same academy, but it is Csontos whose name still travels furthest from Schwaig bei Nürnberg — the one graduate the club points to when asked what its youth work has produced.