WAKASA B-GARNET: Women’s Basketball National Stage Debut

On the first day of the Keio Jr. Winter Cup 2025-26 2025 6th National U15 Basketball Championship, WAKASA B-GARNET, representing Fukui Prefecture, played in the women’s first round, making their first appearance in their third year of existence.

The match started with AC U15 (Kumamoto), and they were behind by 0-15 after about 7 minutes, but after the timeout, #18 Dojo Shinsaki scored their first point with a free throw, and #7 Ochi Nanako, #88 Takimoto Ai and others gave chase. They also showed off their tough defense and the second quarter was evenly matched. However, in this match, his shots failed to hit the target. After ending the first half with a 12-point deficit, they struggled against the opponent’s strong defense in the second half, and ended up giving up at 39-65.

WAKASA B-GARNET is a small team with 15 registered members, 13 of whom are in the 150cm range and two in the 160cm range, 160cm and 162cm. However, head coach Eriko Kimura said, “I don’t think we were beaten by the opponent’s height as much as we expected.” Furthermore, he reflected on the game, saying, “(Since we are small) we are afraid of the opponent’s paint (attacks in the area), so we tried to protect the paint no matter what, but instead we were allowed to take a 3-point shot.And our shot didn’t go in either.I think we lacked offensive power.”

Head coach Kimura (maiden name: Hata), who was born in Fukui Prefecture, ranked 3rd in the nation when he was at Asuwa High School in his hometown, and with the Fujitsu Red Wave, where he played for 10 seasons, he contributed to the Empress’s Cup All-Japan Championship (currently the Empress’s Cup All-Japan Championship) and the W League championship. He has also participated in the Asian Games and Asian Championships as a representative of Japan.

The former top player started the current team in his hometown of Obama, and the story behind it was, “When I was at the local gymnasium, one of my classmates happened to be practicing on his own, so we decided to join him for some independent practice.Other kids started saying, “Me too, me too.”Partly because the number of extracurricular activities at school was decreasing, we decided to form a team. “I was told that they wanted me to do it,” he says.

What started out as teaching once a week during independent practice led to the creation of a team that now meets three times a week.

Head coach Kimura unexpectedly ends up teaching basketball in his hometown. “Nowadays, there are a lot of players from outside the prefecture coming to high school, so I hope that we can raise the standards of the Fukui kids even a little bit and get at least one player who can go to those (powerful) teams,” he said, expressing his feelings for his hometown.

Although they lost the match against AC U15, the WAKASA B-GARNET players’ quick reaction to loose balls, jumping on rebounds, and tenacious defense caught the eye. This is something head coach Kimura always emphasizes, saying, “We’re small, so we can’t win games up top.We’ve always been very thorough about winning the ball below, and we’ve always been talking about boxing out.”

Captain #8 Yume Higashi, who scored the team’s most points with 14 points, said that one of the things she learned during her three years at junior high school was, “I think I learned over the three years how to pursue loose balls until the end, to work hard on defense, and to be able to play in rough situations.”

“This can be said about sports in general, but I want them to learn how to interact with people and how to play with opponents through team play.In addition, each player has their own individuality, and a team is made up of a combination of their strengths, so it’s easy to focus only on cool things like shooting, but there are also players who work hard at rebounding and players who work hard on defense.I hope they understand that those kinds of things are really important.” (Head Coach Kimura)

I will pass on my past experiences to future local players. WAKASA B-GARNET, led by head coach Kimura, who also wanted to give back to his hometown, will bring back to Fukui the national level that they learned from this tournament, and will continue to study hard every day.