Big record - Highschool 31

Senbatsu kendo tournament of high school student is held in Aichi prefecture every year at spring. This tournament is very important for high school kendo players.

Only teams win preliminary in each prefecture have entitled to participate. Therefore, players are generally competitive from 1^st round and winning this tournament means the champion of all domestic Japan teams in spring.

This tournament is known as one of big four championship of high school. (others; Kaiseiki, Gyokuryuku, and Interhigh).

The tournament started at 1992, whose winner was Ikuei (Hyogo prefecture). Surprisingly, Kyusyugakuin (Kumamoto prefecture) high school won 6 consecutive years by 2018, and one big interest of audience is “Is it possible to win this year? (Or stop the record)”.

The following is the final match, the red corner is Kyusyugakuin and white is Meiho (Oita).

Briefly, I would like to explain the result, so first Senpo and Jiho drew the matches.

At Chuken, Kyusyugakuin got lead. At 13:52, red player chuken decided Kote. White player for that moment, drew backward a bit. Though white player tried to stroke Men and one judge for white, red player’s Kote outreached its momentum and precision, two judge admitted for red side.

White Fukusho and Taisho player were eagar to get back the score, but red side players were very good at defense and couldn’t return the score.

So, red side Kyusyugakuin is congratulation for 7^th serial win. Incredible!

We saw the team this year this February at another tournament, and to be honest, we didn’t expect so much because previous years’ team were much more powerful. Although many matches were marginal victory like this final match, they did win this year also and continued the winning record. It was extraordinary.