Sendai Ikuei High School’s Director Wataru Sue is the first time when he was a director at the affiliated Hidemitsu Junior High School, so it will be nearly 15 years.
Even now, my impression of him hasn’t changed, but at the time, he was still as naive as a student. Even so, I used to energetically knock on junior high school baseball players who were still like children on the soccer field on this side of the vast grounds of the hardball club.
That Sue-san… I stare at the screen of “Summer Koshien” while remembering the appearance of those days.
The scene is the 9th inning of the final match. I was chasing the first victory scene for the Tohoku group, which was about to be decided soon. A few days after Sendai Ikuei High School won the championship, I was invited to a program on a local TV station celebrating the achievement.
On this day, the main character is, of course, Director Sue.
Before the live broadcast started and after it ended, I met Director Sue for the first time in a while, and I had a lot of fun chatting with him.
“The number one miracle is…”
Semifinal day. Director Sue’s eyes reflected on the screen looked very tired. Between his hat and mask, the “eyes” are very eloquent and tell a story.
“Did it look like that…”
While laughing, I rubbed my face with both hands and exhaled.
“There were a lot of things that were tough. The players and I.”
From there, it turned into a conversation about life during the tournament.
“It was reported that the win was a series of miracles, but perhaps the biggest miracle was that it was all the first match from the first round.
In the Miyagi preliminaries, we were the No. 1 seed school, so I knew it before it started. However, in the quarter-finals and semi-finals of the Koshien Tournament, a lottery determines the opponent and the start time of the match.
Even so, except for the finals (starting at 14:00), the “first game” continued at 8:00 (the semi-finals were at 9:00).
