Yakumo Sports Day

Well, two months ago we had a school sports festival. Today we had a sports day at the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium. It was an all day event, and I mean ALL day event. For teachers the day started around 8am, but that's when I left to get to the Gymnasium. I didn't arrive till around 10am when the event started. I walked in right about the time they did their opening ceremony. I felt very awkward because I was wearing a suit when everyone was wearing their warm-up outfit.

I had a change of clothes so that was fortunate, but I didn't have a jacket, which wasn't really needed, but would have been nice. It wasn't freezing, but a tad bit cooler than I would have liked. I didn't really do much the first few hours, but watch the different classes play basketball. Then I moved on to watch a little volleyball. I got stuck there watching till around lunchtime. Then I had a boxed lunch and went back to watching basketball again. But this time, one of the 10th grade teachers had asked me to help her coach her class as they played basketball. Which was nice because I was just standing watching, but as a coach you get a chair. I was helping with 10th grade Fuji class, which is known to be the rowdy loud class. They are rowdy and loud, but in this case it was ok because it was in support although the people at the desk keeping score and all the other fun stuff told us to shut up.

The first game when I helped out, we won. It was amazing to be honest with you. It was all on the shoulders of one girl, and she happened to be in the English club, so that made it better. She used to play basketball in Junior High School. I would have never known either. We ended up beating 10th grade Yuri in the first round. Which made me feel kinda bad because I like that class. They are a fun class.

The next round we played some 12th graders, and ended winning by a point in the final seconds of the game. We eeked by in the semi-finals to make it to the finals. I really hadn't done much coaching at this point. I just watched and cheered with the students... sitting on the bench of course. This semi-final game was very exciting to watch too. It was going back and forth for a long time and it was always exciting to watch.

In the finals, the homeroom teacher came back to root for her team. She was surprised that they had made it this far and we were together rooting for the team. During the break I had given some of the players some advice on how to win and how to play the next game. Because I was watching other games earlier I had learned how to pick apart the teams and see the weaknesses and the strengths. I had told some of my team members how to play the next game. But did they listen... of course not. And as a result we lost in the finals. It was heart breaking too, the star player on our side kept hesitating to shoot and that's why the team kinda fell apart. The star player on the other side was creaming everyone in points. She made the most points in the school and I had told my team to ONLY block her forget about everyone else, but the odd thing was NO ONE BLOCKED HER! Pissed off I was, but we ended up losing. But it's ok, it's only a game. We lost to 10th grade Ran, so the other teachers were coming up to me to rub it in. .... Yeah.

After that there was the ceremony for the awards for the top of every grade level. That didn't last long. I didn't mention that there was Table Tennis going on too, but I didn't watch much of that.

After the students games was the Teacher versus Parents / Alumni games. Most of the students already went home by the time we started playing, but some stayed to watch their parents. I was playing volleyball on the teachers side. In the first set, we did a pretty good job as the teachers... lacking in experience and coordination prevailed over the moms. It was close though, but it also wasn't fair because I was a guy. I was the only male playing volleyball at this point.

In the second set, I sat out and let some of the other teachers that were sitting out to come in. This time there were two other male teachers, but the teachers lost bad this set. So I jump back into the tie-breaking set. But we ended up losing. We didn't have the best people in the middle. I was set up in the position to spike and block the ball. But I never had an opportunity to spike it because the ball never left the court.

At this point the teachers would have lost, but the parents insisted that we play some more, we were like... ok. Only because they were parents, you know. After that we played 3 or 4 more sets with the teachers winning all of them. And by this point I was tired as hell. The volleyball teacher kept making me play, saying that she wanted me to be in front and spike and block. I got tired of jumping up and down so much. I was so tired in fact that when I served my last time up, I hit the ball and it barely made it over the net... too bad it went out though. But we ended up winning anyways.

I tried to play basketball a little, but I decided to bow out since I only made 2 baskets out of 14. Not the best percentage in the world, but I never said I was good at basketball.

After the event, of course is a dinner party. But this time, the parents and alumi were invited. The tough situation was that there were only enough chairs for the parents, and the teachers had to serve the parents drinks and such, you know to be polite. Fortunately for me, I don't speak Japanese and I wasn't expected to do anything. I was mingling with the English Teachers all night. It was quite fun actually. I was glad that I had the opportunity to talk with them. I mean, I was talking to some of the teachers that I have usually been getting along with, but with an addition of a few more. I need to be able to get along with other teachers too. I need to get to talk to everyone if I get a chance.

So on the way home, I hitched a ride with Yaya sensei since he drove. It was me, Yaya, and two history teachers. We live the furthest away from the school in Kanagawa. It was a fun ride home too. I felt a little bad that I was picking on Yaya sensei a lot about getting married next month, but he's one of the few male teachers who isn't married. Granted that he's only 25, he's still fairly young. But he said that it's possible in the next year or so to get married with his girlfriend. But would only leave me, and another 10th grade homeroom teacher, actually the one from 10th grade Ran who aren't married. Talk about pressure. I arrived home around midnight, with school the next day. Why the hell would they want to have an event like this on a Wednesday???