Noriko Akai
Now sixty-four years old, she is a woman whose name echoes not only through the world of high school girls’ volleyball, but across the entire landscape of Japanese women’s volleyball.
There was a time in her youth when she stepped away from volleyball due to childbirth and raising a family, but even so, her career has spanned over thirty years.
She is now of an age where the term "elderly" would not be inaccurate, and unlike in her younger days, she no longer hits the ball herself. Spikes struck from her now-weakened arms would be of no use to the club members in training. She has left that part entirely in the hands of her coaches for many years now.
Precisely because of that, she devotes herself to closely observing the children during practice. If she doesn’t do at least that much, she feels she would be failing the children entrusted to her.
Perhaps because of this attitude, she has led teams to national championships at both the Inter-High and Spring High tournaments multiple times. Many of her students have worn the representative uniforms of their age group, and even of the full national team. She is a battle-hardened veteran and a renowned mentor.
Even now, students seeking to join the Himesaki High School Girls’ Volleyball Club—drawn by her reputation—come from all corners of the country.
Himesaki High School has dormitory facilities, so there was a time when they accepted students from as far north as Hokkaido and as far south as Okinawa. But now, a condition has been added: students must be able to travel from home to school in three hours or less by public transportation. It is not enough to say, “it’s fine because they’ll live in the dorm.” It’s only natural that parents would want to attend matches. It’s reassuring for them to know they could come pick up their child within half a day if something happened. This is the belief of a woman who is also a mother.
Even so, when it comes to the children she takes under her wing, she constantly asks herself difficult questions.
“Is this truly the best way to raise them?”
“Am I doing something that might crush this child’s potential?”
These are questions with no clear answers. There is no do-over.
“What kind of youth sports coach am I, if I don’t guide them to love volleyball?”
There are those so-called younger folks—nearing their fifties—who say such naive things. They don’t understand a thing. The demanding nature of the training here is made clear to every student before they join. That they still choose to enter means they’ve made that decision with a certain resolve and determination.
And, unfortunately, the feeling of “love” alone will not make someone good at volleyball. If it could, coaches like us wouldn’t be necessary. What’s more, the children entrusted to her care possess exceptional talent in volleyball—so much so that some may even go pro someday.
These children are beyond the level of simply “liking” the sport. They are raw gems, aiming seriously for the top.
To not cultivate such talent—what kind of educator would that be? What kind of coach?
But the time available to guide these girls, still immature in both body and mind, is barely a thousand days.
In contrast, the doorway to future opportunities is painfully narrow. To rise to the next level in volleyball, they must catch the attention of scouts at tournaments such as Inter-High or Spring High, or equivalent competitions. If they’re headed to college, there's still a chance to reverse course through entrance exams, but for the pros, there are no open tryouts. Being scouted is essential.
However, those scouts have seen hundreds, even thousands of players. Nothing short of extraordinary will catch their eye. That’s why each player needs at least one strong, standout weapon. But to develop even one or two such skills that truly stand out during the three years of high school is already a difficult feat. To ignore that reality and let students train aimlessly is...
They say men are romantics, but now that she’s over fifty, she ought to start seeing things more clearly.
She had assumed that Tamaki Commercial—led by that romantic—would be their opponent in the semifinals, and so had sent a benched player to scout their match. But the result was unexpected.
Their opponent in the semifinals is Matsubara Girls’ High School.
The younger sisters of Tachibana Mika, who graduated four years ago, are their next opponents.
Every time she hears that name, she can’t help but feel a pang of guilt. Mika herself always spoke of her as a mentor, expressing gratitude at every turn—but does she truly deserve that title?
Mika had aspired to be a spiker. It was she who redirected her to the position of libero. Was that truly the right choice?
Let it be said in Mika’s defense—she certainly had the talent to be a spiker. But she was both blessed and, in some ways, unlucky in her teammates.
Mika stood 176 cm tall in high school. But in the year above her, the year below, and even within her own year, there were spiker hopefuls who were over 180 cm tall.
She had great jumping ability, but her jumps tended to carry forward slightly, causing her to lag just a few centimeters behind others in height.
She struggled slightly—ever so slightly—to spike at the very peak of her jump.
None of these were true weaknesses. But when three such slight disadvantages overlap, the net result is nearly a 10 cm gap compared to the other spikers.
She was also unlucky in terms of timing. One of her classmates went on to become the ace spiker of the U19, and later the U23 team. Powerful rivals surrounded her from every side. Had she joined the school in a year with fewer tall players, she likely would have been assigned to spiker.
But believing she would be relegated to the bench if she remained a spiker, she steered Mika toward her other talent—receiving. As it turned out, that path led her to blossom, eventually becoming the starting libero for the national team.
But still, that was not the future Mika herself had initially wished for. Had she not given up and continued training as a spiker, she might well have become a national team spiker instead.
There is no way to know. There is no way to redo it. Truly, education is difficult.
And it was from Tachibana Mika that she heard a fair bit about Matsubara Girls’ High School.
There are three third-years. Five first-years. Of those, two of the first-years only started playing volleyball this past April—they’re complete beginners. However, those two beginners have extraordinary physical abilities. The team’s attacks generally come from the left side in a one-dimensional manner, but that one dimension is devastatingly powerful.
Then she watched the footage. Number 3—judging by the height and force of her spikes alone—ranks among the top tier in the country.
As for Number 6, her jumping height is almost suspicious. It’s the kind of thing that makes you wonder if the footage was digitally altered. She’s already on par with male players. This footage is probably being watched by every member of the team right now via the club’s internal SNS.
Truly, we live in a good age. Back then, they had to film with video cameras that weighed several kilos. But now, it's easy to shoot and just as easy to share the footage.
Just as technology has progressed, the children have also changed. Today’s kids don’t obey unreasonable orders like they used to. …Some people call that “lacking grit,” but those people don’t see the true nature of things.
Today’s kids are just smarter. They’re much better at thinking things through than we were.
These spikes are terrifying. But even so, she went ahead and posted the following message on the club’s internal SNS. Because if it’s them—those bright girls—they’ll get excited and start thinking things through, searching happily for answers.
“Now then, everyone. How many of Matsubara Girls’ weaknesses were you able to find?
That’ll be the topic of Monday’s pre-practice meeting.”
Time passed, and Monday arrived. The Inter-High Prefectural Semifinal and Final would be held this coming Saturday.
They were having the team meeting in preparation for the weekend’s semifinal match. And as she listened to the results of their discussion, she couldn’t help but smile.
First: Don’t be afraid. That was the absolute baseline requirement. And there wasn’t a hint of fear in any of their eyes.
Next: Identify the opponent’s weaknesses. And sure enough, they had found the very same weaknesses that she had spotted.
That alone was enough for her to feel satisfied.
As expected, the main problem is Number 6’s serve and spike. They have to figure out how to deal with those—or there’s no way forward.
But—
“Let me be frank. There’s no way we can ‘solve’ those serves and spikes in just five days before Saturday. But we can get used to them. So, for the next five days, you’ll all be receiving serves and spikes from the boys’ volleyball team.”
At Himesaki High, the boys’ volleyball team isn’t quite as strong as the girls’, but even so, they’re at a level where they can compete at the national level. Of course, their first-string players are also preparing for their Inter-High Prefectural Qualifiers this Saturday, so she couldn’t ask them. But she’d already received permission from the boys’ coach to use the second-string team.
No matter how physically gifted they may be, their opponents are still high school girls. aThere must be a strategy to beat them.
The strategist, whose coaching career spans more years than the opponent’s coach has lived, quietly burned with fighting spirit.
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