Special feature: The four years we ran through.2024
Ryoichi Yazaki
2024/03/14
(Last update: 2024/03/14)
#Run through 4 years.2024
#Yokohama National University
We explored the background behind the “national whirlwind” that occurred during last fall’s Kanagawa University League match (Photo by Ryoichi Yazaki)
Last fall, Yokohama National University attracted attention among avid college baseball fans. The team, which had been repeatedly fighting for last place in the Kanagawa University League until spring, suddenly achieved six wins and three points for the season. Although they missed out on participating in the Kanto Regional Championship (Yokohama Mayor’s Cup), which leads to the Meiji-Jingu Tournament, Yokohama National University is now following the same national team, Kanoya University of Physical Education, which advanced to the last eight at the All-Japan University Baseball Championship in June. It caused a national whirlwind. What was happening on the bench, excited by victory? The story of the 4th graders who led the team will be written in 4 parts.
[Special feature]The 4 years we ran through.2024
“I never thought I’d feel this frustrated” after winning 3 points.
The realistic goal they set before the start of the fall league was “Escape to the bottom. Avoid replacement games.”
“Well, I was talking about winning the championship and participating in the Yokohama Mayor’s Cup (top 2nd place), but it doesn’t seem realistic for a team with 0 wins in the spring to say that.”
Yuta Sakate (4th year, Prefectural Sagamihara), who served as captain, reveals his true feelings. In order to escape from the bottom, they will need at least two wins, two wins (one point) against the same opponent. Because he was keenly aware of how difficult it was.
Yokohama National University has been a member of the league since its inception in 1949, and its victory in the first league match that year was the only one in its more than 70-year history. In the spring of 1999, the team achieved second place for the first time in 49 years thanks to the success of ace Tomoki Kitagawa (formerly Orix), but since the 2000s, the team has moved back and forth between the 1st and 2nd divisions. While other universities are attracting players with proven track records from strong schools across the country, due to the high hurdles of entrance exams for national universities, many of the club members are from preparatory schools in prefectures near the Kanto region, and the current team has no players who have participated in Koshien. not present. It is inevitable that you will struggle.
In 2020, when the current fourth-year students enrolled, they were in the second division. The following year, in 2021, while winning the second division in the spring, they lost in a replacement match against Shoin University. In the fall, they played a replacement match against Shoin University again, and this time they won and achieved their long-awaited promotion to Division 1.
They won two games in the spring of 2022 in the first division, and one win in the fall, but were unable to earn any points and remained at the bottom of the league. Last spring, when they became seniors, they went 0-10. In both cases, they defeated the second-division champion schools and remained in the first division, but they participated in the replacement game for five consecutive seasons, and in the three seasons after being promoted to the first division, they had never won a point.
Sakate said that his goal before the season started was to “get out of last place and avoid a relegation battle.” (Photo by Ryoichi Yazaki)
Last fall, such a team narrowly won 1-0 in the second game against Kanto Gakuin University, which was the opening card. They ended their season-long losing streak in league games with 19, and won the third game, 4-1, in which they needed to earn points for the first time in four years. From there, the rapid advance began.
In the second game against Kanagawa University, they extended the first game and won 7-6 after an 11th inning tie-break, and in the third game, they entered the game with 1 win and 1 loss, winning a wild battle 11-8 and winning consecutive points. In the third game, against Kanagawa Institute of Technology, they were tied up until the third game, resulting in their first three points in 23 years.
With the championship in sight, the fourth card, against Toin Yokohama University, was held down by left-handed pitcher Kojaju (4th year, Shonan Gakuin), who was drafted in first place by Rakuten, with 10 strikeouts in 6 innings. Lost called at -12. They lost the second game and dropped points for the first time. They also lost consecutive games against Yokohama University of Commerce on the final card, which was a chance to qualify for the Yokohama Mayor’s Cup. They finished the season in 3rd place with 6 wins and 7 losses, and 3 points.
After the final match, in a circle where all the players and staff had gathered, captain Sakate was in tears and was at a loss for words, saying, “I never thought I would feel so frustrated after getting three points.”
From the spring of “working hard” to the autumn of “let’s have fun”
Why did a team that couldn’t win a single game in the spring league suddenly start winning?
Sakate says, “I’ve been thinking about it ever since, but I can’t find an answer.” “I don’t think it was just one thing that happened, but rather the result of a combination of various factors.”
After retiring from club activities, my graduation thesis was about “team flow.” “Flow” refers to “extreme concentration.”
Simply put, it refers to the feeling of being so happy that you forget the time while concentrating. Not only in sports, but also in part-time jobs at restaurants, when a large number of customers constantly come to the restaurant during mealtimes, you become immersed in your work, and when you suddenly look at the clock, hours have already passed, which is a type of “flow.” It’s the state. This ultimate state is called the “zone,” and it is said that athletes who compete on big stages such as the Olympics cannot achieve great results unless they can control their brains and hearts.
The third card that Sakate picks up, saying, “Maybe that was a flow state,” is the third game against Kanagawa Institute of Technology. It happened in the bottom of the fourth inning when he was trailing by two runs and scored 10 points to decide the game.
“Even in practice games, we had never scored such a large number of points.It was an important official game, and we were able to do it against a strong opponent.The opponent’s mistakes were also involved, but even when the runners ran, they didn’t get hurt. Everything I set out to do was successful.I felt like no matter what I did, it would work, and I was scoring 10 points in no time.”
Looking back, I often found myself feeling “fun” during the fall league games. It’s not just because we won.
“In the spring, my desire to work hard got the better of me, and I kept thinking, “This is what I have to do.” In the fall, I was able to take a break from that and switch to “Let’s have fun,” which is one of the things that changed our team. There may be two factors.”
There were many smiling faces among the players during last fall’s league matches (Photo by Ryoichi Yazaki)
The reason I was able to stay calm even in the most extreme situations
Sakate also experienced something similar to “flow” during his high school days.
Sakate, who was the captain of Sagamihara High School, played against Yokohama High School in the quarterfinals of the Kanagawa Tournament in the summer of his third year. Against the champions, who are aiming to play in Koshien for the fourth consecutive summer, they allowed a 5-0 lead, but in the bottom of the seventh inning, they scored five runs with a concentrated hit to tie the score. With the entire stadium surrounded by a strange atmosphere, the momentum did not stop even after the inning changed, and in the bottom of the eighth inning, Yokohama’s Masaki Oikawa (currently Hanshin), who took the mound as a reliever, scored three points and made a comeback. did.
The defense in the top of the 9th inning led to 8-6. He was in a pinch with no outs on first and second base, and the No. 4 batter, Takateru Watarai (currently at DeNA), was at bat. Sakate, who plays shortstop, took his own time to gather the infielders on the mound and told them, “Don’t think you can win just yet,” encouraging them to concentrate on the play in front of them.
The experience I had a year ago may have been a big factor in me being able to maintain my composure even in the ultimate situation. The summer of the previous year, when he was in his second year, they had a fierce battle against Tokai University Sagami in the quarterfinals of the Kanagawa tournament. Despite entering the bottom of the ninth inning with the same score as the game against Yokohama, 8-6, they rushed to win. He allowed the first batter to get on base and allowed the opponent’s No. 3 batter, Shota Morishita (currently Hanshin), to tie the game with two runs. I had a bitter memory of losing the game in a walk-off.
A similar situation arose this time. Sakate made a nice diving catch on Watarai’s fly ball to the back of shortstop and got the first out, and the game was set without giving the flow of the game to his opponent. I never felt the frustration of a year ago again. “The weak defeat the strong. I think the essence of sports is that the strong wins,” Sakate says.
Even public schools can compete equally with Yokohama and Tokai University Sagami, and depending on how they play, they can even win. That response has become a sure thing for Sakate now.
Sakate, who caught Watarai’s fly ball well when he was at Sagamihara High School (Photo by Asahi Shimbun)
What’s more frustrating than being suppressed by Kojaju…
back to the topic. Even in the spring season, which ended with 0 wins and 10 losses, there were at least 4 or 5 games where I thought, “We should have won this game.” “It wouldn’t have been strange to have 4 wins and 6 losses,” Sakate declares. “I guess you could say I was just playing baseball, and as I played the game, there were times when I would get stuck in points. At times like that, for some reason, the gears would start to go out of order.”
Sometimes a fly that goes up between the infield and outfield ends up being a hit without being able to catch it, or one well-timed hit can completely disintegrate any positive feelings you had up until that point. He held out until the end in a close game, but from then on he conceded a number of goals, and by the end of the game, the lead was widening. Self-destruction means self-destruction. There were some games where we felt like we gave 100%, but that didn’t necessarily mean we won.
“In the end, we are tied up with our opponent. When our opponent is on the decline, we can only win if we can play at our best,” Sakate says. In fact, when we first moved up to the first division, we didn’t know the strength of our opponent, so we went into matches with the mindset of “let’s do our best.” So even though we were able to achieve a “good match,” we were unable to get enough points.
Until last spring, even if we played well, we couldn’t get enough points. (Photo by Ryoichi Yazaki)
Autumn played the match with the understanding that it would be impossible if they fought on equal terms. If your opponent gives 100%, you can’t win. That’s why even in the game where they were completely defeated by Toin Yokohama University’s Furusa, I didn’t feel any more damage than just one loss. If a pitcher of this class were pitching at his best, no team would be able to score points. “We were prepared to take that into consideration, give our 100%, and take advantage of any openings our opponent had,” he says. That’s why, even more than losing the first game, I regret not being able to somehow win the second game and bring it to the third game to face Kosha again.
Sakate looks back on his fighting style in the fall, saying, “We were able to hold our ground, launch all the attacks we wanted, and then play matches where we could either outdo or not outdo our opponents.” Why was this possible? Among Sakate’s “several factors,” one of the major factors was “the energy of the fourth-year students.”
The presence of student coaches who have become opinion leaders
There are 30 fourth-year club members. There are 12 third-year students. It is said that third-year students are the norm, but the number of fourth-year students is unprecedented in history. Alumni often said, “There has never been a generation with so many people.”
It’s a bad way to express this, but in one sense the coronavirus has been a tailwind. At the same time as she enrolled in the school, the coronavirus pandemic hit, and many restrictions were placed on activities for about a year. In a normal year, many people would join the club, be surprised by how serious they are, and leave the club to join other clubs. The fourth-year members of the club found themselves unable to devote themselves to the club even after joining the club, which instead deepened their desire to play baseball more seriously.
Even on their days off, some would go to the batting center to bat or participate in softball. On Christmas Day, after the year-end practice session, everyone spontaneously gathered on the field to practice. “That’s how many baseball idiots gathered here,” Sakate says with a laugh.
The student coach, Takatoshi Yoshida (4th year, affiliated with Tokyo City University), became an opinion leader along with Sakate this year.
Yoshida played as an athlete until his second year. Yokohama National University has a high proportion of student coaches. Since the director is unable to provide full-time instruction, student coaches are in charge of regular practice, from menu creation to progress. He works with the captain to set the direction for the team, and also makes suggestions to the manager regarding the use of players in games.
When I entered my third year, there was no student coach in that grade, so I decided that someone had to do it, so the whole grade talked about it. Several people, including Yoshida and Sakate, were put forward as candidates, and when final arrangements were made, Yoshida announced his candidacy, saying, “I’ll do it.” Two student coaches have been appointed, along with Hayato Iwamoto (4th year, Koyamadai), who is in charge of the pitching department.
Yoshida became a student coach when he entered his third year (Photo by Ryoichi Yazaki)
Yoshida describes Autumn’s fighting style as, “In the end, my luck was overcome by my ability.”
“I have a slightly different way of thinking than Sakate, and I don’t want to define ourselves as “underdogs.” When I thought about it, it wasn’t possible in just a year or so.I realized that along the way.There is a big difference from other universities in terms of scouting and ground environment.That’s why the idea of “the weak defeating the strong” is fine. Therefore, we need to strengthen those “weaknesses” a little more.If we keep putting them on the back burner, the result will always be the same.”
When I was a player, I was motivated by my own growth, such as “I want to get better” and “I want to be a regular player.” After he became a coach, he was able to get joy and a sense of accomplishment from his team’s victories.
“More than anything, I love this national university baseball team, so I’ve always wondered what I can do to make the team better and get more people to know about it.”
Yoshida’s thoughts are gradually taking shape.
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The next one will be released on the 15th.
2024-03-13 23:05:46
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