Keio High School, which won the 105th Summer Koshien High School Baseball Tournament that ended last August, was the biggest topic of discussion. Interestingly, the reason why Keiogo became the focus of attention in Japan was not because of baseball. This was because Keio High School was a school with virtually no special baseball students.
Keio University, a sister school of Keio University, a prestigious private institution representing Japan, has a special sports recommendation admission system (sports special student admission system), unlike other prestigious baseball schools in Japan. Keio University does not allow student athletes to enroll even if they have exceptional talent for baseball. Only student athletes with a significant level of academic ability are selected.
Keio students must have a combined academic score of 38 points or more (45 points out of 9 subjects) for 9 middle school subjects during the document screening, and must have outstanding performance in cultural or sports activities. In addition, you must take an interview and a writing test. As a student athlete who has to practice baseball every day, it is very difficult to overcome Keio High School’s high hurdles. Of the nine selected members of Keigo who won the Koshien competition this summer, eight passed this standard.
Nevertheless, how was the Keio Baseball Club able to reach the top of the Koshien? Of course, this is because there have been many players with outstanding skills recently. However, the Keio Baseball Club emphasized autonomy over coercion. Keigo’s baseball philosophy, ‘Enjoy Baseball’, which states that players should always enjoy baseball while training and competing, is not concerned with baseball performance. In fact, most Keigo baseball players do not advance to the Japanese professional baseball stage. Among these, there are quite a few student baseball players who take college exams and enter departments unrelated to sports.
Naturally, players with poor academic performance are excluded from training and competitions. The second son of Kiyohara Kazuhiro (56), who led PL Academy to victory in the summer Koshien tournament in 1983 and 1985 and was Japan’s leading slugger during his time with the Seibu Lions, Kiyohara Katsu, who is currently in his second year at Keigo, also repeated a grade due to his grades and joined the baseball team training. failed to participate. As such, there is no place for ‘Dad Chance’ in the Keio Baseball Club, which pursues the development of ‘studying student-athletes’.
Most high school baseball players in Japan are required to cut their hair short, but Keio has long ago chosen to have their hair cut short. It was judged that the discipline symbolized by ‘hair length’ is not necessarily important in living a successful life as a baseball player or member of society in general.
Keio doesn’t even train for long periods of time. This is not unrelated to recent changes in Japanese society. Takahiko Moribayashi (50), Keigo’s baseball coach, said in an interview with the Japanese monthly magazine Bungeishunchu last September, “The sport of baseball is still attractive to students who want to become professional players, but from the parents’ perspective, “It is more attractive to have students play sports such as soccer or basketball, where practice can be completed in half a day,” he said.
This means that there is a social view that baseball is not suitable for an era of low birth rates due to the characteristics of baseball, which generally requires long team training times and a high risk of injury. Even taking this into account, it also means that it is not desirable for all Japanese high school baseball teams to focus only on baseball training for long periods of time.
There are close to 4,000 high school baseball teams in Japan. Among these, there are several types of teams. There are schools like Keio High School that have virtually no baseball students, and there are also prestigious baseball schools made up entirely of baseball students. In addition, there are quite a few schools where regular students and special baseball students are sweating it out on the baseball team. In these school baseball teams, it is common for regular students to participate as managers, scorers, or public relations officers, even if they do not necessarily play as baseball players. They really like baseball, so they take time away from studying to participate in baseball club activities.
This phenomenon, which is commonly seen not only in baseball teams but also in Japanese high school sports teams, is closely related to Japan’s Bukatsu (club activity) system. The Bukatsu system refers not only to sports department activities but also to extracurricular activities in various fields such as music, art, film, and literature. Bukatsu, which appeared in the study guidance guidelines of the Japanese Ministry of Education in 1968, became a mandatory system in Japanese middle and high schools in 1972, and has recently become a voluntary elective subject.온라인카지노
In the case of baseball, which is the most popular sport in Japan, the number of regular students participating in the sport has increased with the introduction of the Bukatsu system. There have been cases where high school baseball teams consisting of regular students and special baseball students participate in the finals of the Koshien Tournament.
Due to this situation, the number of baseball coaches who also serve as school teachers has increased in Japanese high school baseball teams. In a high school baseball team, the aspect that the coach must be fundamentally an educator rather than simply a person who functionally teaches baseball has been strengthened. Coach Hiroshi Sasaki (48), who opened the way for Shohei Otani (29, LA Angels), the best star currently playing in the MLB (Major League Baseball), to pursue dual-wielding (both pitching and batting) during his high school days and even gave him character education, He is a teacher in charge of an intellectual and civic subject that combines history and ethics.
It may be very difficult for a school like Keio Ogo, which does not have special baseball students, to reach the top of the Koshien competition again. Moreover, it is not very likely that a school like this will develop a baseball player representing Japan. However, the power of Japanese high school baseball, which operates in various forms, plays a decisive role in expanding the ‘baseball market’ by not only nurturing promising players but also creating loyal baseball fans for the future. This can also be a lesson for Korean baseball, which aims to be a ‘student athlete who studies.’