After working as a manager for the men’s baseball club, Yoshio Yugei founded the women’s baseball club in 2020.
In recent years, the environment of women’s baseball has changed drastically, and the degree of attention is increasing. In order not to end this popularity and interest transiently, director Yoshio Yugei, who heads the women’s baseball club at Tokai University Shizuoka Shoyo High School in Shizuoka City, has a teaching method of “50% + 50%”. He also emphasizes that fashion is also an important factor.
Last summer, the final of the National High School Baseball Championship was set in Koshien. It was a historic moment when a female player stood for the first time in a high school baseball sanctuary. This year, on April 3, the final of the National High School Women’s Baseball Selection Tournament was held at Tokyo Dome for the first time.
High school baseball, which was thought to be a “competition only for boys,” has changed significantly in recent years. Women’s baseball clubs have been established all over the country, impressing that there are many girls who potentially want to play baseball. In April 2020, the first women’s baseball club in the prefecture was established at Tokai University Shizuoka Shoyo High School in Shizuoka Prefecture, the “soccer kingdom”. The start is 3 members. Currently, the total number of new 2nd and 3rd graders has increased to 31. 30 new first graders joined the club.
The team is led by Yoshio Yuge. He has won the national championship in the softball baseball club of Tokai University Shizuoka Shoyo Junior High School, and has also served as the director of the men’s hardball baseball club of Tokai University Shizuoka Shoyo High School. I have witnessed cases where female players who played baseball in elementary and junior high schools switched to another sport or quit sports because there was no team in high school. Then, thinking that it was necessary to have an environment where baseball could be continued even in high school, he founded the women’s baseball club. While he welcomes the growing popularity and interest in women’s baseball, he also has a sense of crisis.
