Shugakukan, ostensibly of Kumamoto, has won it’s first game in the Koshien Tournament currently under way. I say “ostensibly of Kumamoto” because, though the school is located in Kumamoto, all of the starting players are from other parts of japan (this year as was the case last year):
https://www.kyureki.com/koko/121/1538/
As a long-term interloper here, I guess I should be open to young people coming here from other locations and, of course, ordinarily I would be. But in this case, Shugakukan works with some of the best young baseball prodigies that can be found in Japan while other coaches here have to work with the local students who happen to attend their school. Then those truly local schools must compete with Shugakukan to see who gets to represent Kumamoto in the national tournament.
With this tournament, Shugakukan is representing Kumamoto for the fourth consecutive time since the spring of 2016: spring ‘16, summer ‘16, spring ‘17, summer ‘17. We’ll see how well they do in this tournament but in the previous 3 tournaments they made it to the final four each time:
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/秀岳館高等学校
Their domination has a relatively short history but there is no indication that it is likely to end in the near future.
So, my beef with Shugakukan is that, basically, kids from other “normal” schools hardly have a chance. I don’t really understand how it happened but this year Kumamoto Kogyo also participated in the spring tournament as a representative of Kumamoto. Perhaps there was some recognition that Shugakukan was in a different category. I don’t know.
I guess it would be kind of cool, in a way, if Shugakukan could win the tournament for Kumamoto this year. But I would be able to root much more enthusiastically if I were rooting for a group of local kids who, by dint of sheer effort and determination, had managed to come together to win their way to the top.
– This rant has been brought to you by Kirk
https://mainichi.jp/koshien/articles/20170811/k00/00e/050/278000c
