Skip to main content

Nagano Higashi Girls Regroup Under Leadership of New Ekiden Coach

After the departure of their longtime coach, top high school girls' ekiden program Nagano Higashi H.S. has regrouped and set off in pursuit of a place at Nationals. Training starts in the early morning. A highly ranked program nationally, Nagano Higashi has finished 2nd two years in a row at the National High School Ekiden, but last year the team finished only 9th. "We really tasted disappointment," said captain Kyoka Gomi. "But that disappointment is what's driving us now."

This year the team's coaching staff has changed dramatically. After having developed the Nagano Higashi program into a national-level power, head coach Ryoji Tamaki departed to take over at Nittai University. Taking his place is Fumio Yokouchi, a coach with experience at the high school level elsewhere in Nagano. Coach Yokouchi is also director of the Nagano Athletics Association's promotional committee. "I'm fortunate to inherit a superb team with a group of well-prepared and highly motivated student athletes, and it is my responsibility to help them develop."

Nagano Higashi's roster this year features 14 athletes, including 8 first-years. Holding back plans for the young new team's growth is the shadow of the coronavirus crisis. The National High School Track and Field Championships were canceled, and the team was unable to do its regular summer away training camp. The fate of the season's major goal, December's National High School Ekiden in Kyoto, remains unclear. All the team can do is believe the race will happen and train their best for it. "I really believe we can make top 8 at Nationals," said Gomi. "Now's the time to put in the work to make it happen." Coach Yokouchi agreed, saying, "What we do on a day-to-day basis is what counts, and we just have to have faith that the payoff will come."

source article:
https://this.kiji.is/668054056821589089
translated by Brett Larner

Buy Me A Coffee
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

Hakone Champ AGU Hits 50 km a Day in Spring Break Training Camp

Having scored its 3rd-straight Hakone Ekiden win this past January, Aoyama Gakuin University spent the Golden Week spring holidays training on the Myoko Plateau in Niigata from May 2-6. Along with the champion men's ekiden team, the first 2 members of AGU's new women's long distance team Nodoka Ashida and Kairi Ikeno , and AGU alumni and 2026 New Year Ekiden champion GMO team members Yuya Yoshida and Asahi Kuroda also took part in the training camp. Depending on the day's training schedule, mileage at the camp was over 50 km a day. AGU men's captain Kaito Nakamura confidently said, "This Golden Week training camp is where we lay the foundations for our 4th-straight Hakone title." A lot of people spend Golden Week on vacation, but the AGU ekiden team spent their time working hard on Myoko's rolling land amid the sprouting leaves of spring. On the 2nd day of the camp, May 3, team members woke up at 5:00 a.m. to do their warmup. The team assembled a...
1 comment
Read more

Everything You Need to Know About the 2026 Hakone Ekiden

The Hakone Ekiden is the world's biggest road race, 2 days of road relay action with Japan's 20 best university teams racing 10 half marathon-scale legs from central Tokyo to the mountains east of Mount Fuji and back. The level just keeps going higher and higher , hitting the point this year where there are teams with 10-runner averages of 13:33.10 for 5000 m, 27:55.98 for 10000 m, and 1:01:20 for the half marathon. It's never been better, and with great weather in the forecast it's safe to say this could be one of the best races in Hakone's 102-year history, especially on Day One. If you've seen it then you know NTV's live broadcast is the best sports broadcast in the world, with the pre-race show kicking off at 7:00 a.m. Japan time on the 2nd and 3rd and the race starting at 8:00 a.m. sharp. If you've got a VPN you should be able to watch it on TVer starting at 7:50 a.m. on the 2nd , and again at 7:50 a.m. on the 3rd . There's even a 2-hour high...
3 comments
Read more

70th Yamagata-ken Judan Ekiden

The 70th running of the Yamagata-ken Judan Ekiden happened over the start of the Golden Week holidays, a 3-day, 29-leg race covering 306.9 km around the northern prefecture of Yamagata. There used to be a lot more of these races where people from the prefecture run for their hometown teams on a Tour de Whatever prefecture or area it happens to be held in, but Yamagata's is one of the few to have survived this long. And amazingly enough, local broadcaster YBC live streamed the entire thing on Youtube. There aren't many corporate teams in the mostly rural area, so runners from the ND Software corporate team played a heavy role, its 2 best runners Masato Arao and Ryoma Takeuchi winning their stages on Day 2 with Takeuchi doubling to anchor the Kita-Murayama team to an overall 5th-place finish, and Koichi Shoji breaking the 2nd leg CR on Day 1 and winning the 2nd-to-last stage on Day 3 to play a key role in the Yamagata city team taking the overall win in 16:06:51, 3:09/km ...
1 comment
Read more