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Bears Announces New Women's Team Coached by Hakone Winner

Housekeeping services provider Bears Co., Ltd. held a press conference in Tokyo to formally announce the launch of its new women's track and field team Bears Camellia. The new's team starting lineup features five athletes and head coach Yuya Takayanagi, 31, a member of Nittai University's 2013 Hakone Ekiden champion team.

At the press conference Takayanagi discussed athletes' "second career," talking about how after they retire from competition most corporate league athletes leave the company they run for. Based on his own experience, he said that he hoped to help guarantee team members a future through working for the company in tandem with competitive life.

Bears VP Yuki Takahashi commented, "I hope that this will be an opportunity for team members to develop as people, as professionals, and as athletes." In the future, athletes on the team will be categorized into three levels according to their achievements, "Top," "Development" and "Satellite" to aid with recruitment and replacement and to provide a sense of competition.

On weekdays team members will have training sessions in early morning. In the rest of the morning and the afternoon they will work, followed by evening training. On the morning of the press conference members ran together at 6:00 a.m. on a Tokyo-area running course. The team's initial goal is to run next year's Princess Ekiden, the qualifying race for the National Corporate Women's Ekiden. In 2024 the goal will be to qualify.

Bears Co., Ltd. has sponsored a cheerleading team, Bears Ray, for 6 years. In 2020 the team won the Japanese national cheerleading championships, and it is now aiming to win its first world title. With that kind of upwardly mobile team already in-house, coach Takayanagi said, "It's a challenging situation, but that's the most rewarding kind."

source article:
translated by Brett Larner

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