Weekend Update: November 10
Saturday, November 10: Prefectural “Ekiden” Track Meet
62 girls teams and 62 boys teams from junior highs schools around Saitama prefecture gathered at the Kumagaya (a city about an hour’s drive from Tokigawa) Sports Park to compete in a 6 x 3km “marathon” race. I pestered the track coach, who also happens to be one of the English teachers, during the week beforehand for details about the meet until he invited me to ride on the bus with the track team.
It was a miserable day weather-wise, raining pretty steadily since early morning, and it was chilly too. Nonetheless, at 9:45am, the girls teams took to the track. Unfortunately our girls ekiden team didn’t make it to the prefectural meet, so I used the girls race as a chance to figure out what the heck this thing was all about. I didn’t realize until that morning that it was a relay race (not because I’m completely unobservant, but because watching our team practice, they always ran together, never in relay-style). I have no idea what distance the girls ran, but the boys each ran 3km (1.8miles), except the first runner, who ran 3.26km (2.02miles).
Our team took to the track at 11am and finished about one minute after 12pm in 31st place, which I think is really good for a small-town school of only 230 students total. To put it into a bit more perspective, at the county-level ekiden tournament, the city 20-minutes over called Higashi-Matsuyama, because of its size, was allowed to qualify 2 teams for the prefectural ekiden meet, whereas only 2 other teams from the entire county were able to qualify for the prefectural meet, Tokigawa Junior High School being one of them (the other JHS in my town unfortunately didn’t qualify, but that would have been a feat and a half considering it has about 170 students and no track team).
Of our 6 runners, 4 were 3rd year students (14-16 years old) and 2 were 2nd year students (13-15 years old). All the members of the boys track team, plus a couple friends of the ekiden runners went to cheer on our team, and the track coach, Mr. Hayashi, said I shocked all the boys by showing up at 6:45am at the school and subsequently getting on the bus with them. I was hoping for that effect. Despite the rain and despite the language barrier, I had a good time. It was great to have a chance to cheer on and spend time with the students outside of class/school. Most of the students were still too shy to try to speak with me very much, but there were a number of students, including ones who are usually really quiet in class, who were quite outgoing at the track meet. It helped a lot, I think, that a couple of 1st grade boys who are clowns and don’t care at all about the language barrier were there making me laugh with their horsing around.
First photo: The start of the boys race.
Second photo: The outside course; cheering on our runner (supporters = purple jackets, white pants in the center of the photo).
Third photo: Our team’s final runner, Ryota Sakashita, heading for the finish line.
Fourth photo: Ekiden runners, boys track team members and track coaches, (left), Mr. Arai and (right), Mr. Hayashi.
Fifth photo: Final thoughts and words by the ekiden runners and the coaches
62 girls teams and 62 boys teams from junior highs schools around Saitama prefecture gathered at the Kumagaya (a city about an hour’s drive from Tokigawa) Sports Park to compete in a 6 x 3km “marathon” race. I pestered the track coach, who also happens to be one of the English teachers, during the week beforehand for details about the meet until he invited me to ride on the bus with the track team.
It was a miserable day weather-wise, raining pretty steadily since early morning, and it was chilly too. Nonetheless, at 9:45am, the girls teams took to the track. Unfortunately our girls ekiden team didn’t make it to the prefectural meet, so I used the girls race as a chance to figure out what the heck this thing was all about. I didn’t realize until that morning that it was a relay race (not because I’m completely unobservant, but because watching our team practice, they always ran together, never in relay-style). I have no idea what distance the girls ran, but the boys each ran 3km (1.8miles), except the first runner, who ran 3.26km (2.02miles).
Our team took to the track at 11am and finished about one minute after 12pm in 31st place, which I think is really good for a small-town school of only 230 students total. To put it into a bit more perspective, at the county-level ekiden tournament, the city 20-minutes over called Higashi-Matsuyama, because of its size, was allowed to qualify 2 teams for the prefectural ekiden meet, whereas only 2 other teams from the entire county were able to qualify for the prefectural meet, Tokigawa Junior High School being one of them (the other JHS in my town unfortunately didn’t qualify, but that would have been a feat and a half considering it has about 170 students and no track team).
Of our 6 runners, 4 were 3rd year students (14-16 years old) and 2 were 2nd year students (13-15 years old). All the members of the boys track team, plus a couple friends of the ekiden runners went to cheer on our team, and the track coach, Mr. Hayashi, said I shocked all the boys by showing up at 6:45am at the school and subsequently getting on the bus with them. I was hoping for that effect. Despite the rain and despite the language barrier, I had a good time. It was great to have a chance to cheer on and spend time with the students outside of class/school. Most of the students were still too shy to try to speak with me very much, but there were a number of students, including ones who are usually really quiet in class, who were quite outgoing at the track meet. It helped a lot, I think, that a couple of 1st grade boys who are clowns and don’t care at all about the language barrier were there making me laugh with their horsing around.
First photo: The start of the boys race.
Second photo: The outside course; cheering on our runner (supporters = purple jackets, white pants in the center of the photo).
Third photo: Our team’s final runner, Ryota Sakashita, heading for the finish line.
Fourth photo: Ekiden runners, boys track team members and track coaches, (left), Mr. Arai and (right), Mr. Hayashi.
Fifth photo: Final thoughts and words by the ekiden runners and the coaches
posted by Mandy | 8:49 PM
1 Comments:
As usual mr Hayashi, is doing more sports things than actually teaching english.
Chris (sorry just came across your blog on flickr)
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