June 6, 2007
Sport's Day 2007
On Saturday, June 2, Seiritsu held its Sport’s Festival at the school’s sport’s training ground in the City of Washimiya, Saitama Prefecture.
All the homerooms competed against other homerooms in the same grade (1st, 2nd and 3rd). In addition, the soccer and baseball club’s student athletes competed against each other, for example, 1st year soccer boys versus against 1st year baseball boys.
Events included:
1. Team relays
2. Tug-of-war
3. Group skip rope: to see which class could do the most jumps with about 10 people without getting tangled up (91 times might have been the days record)
4. 4-person land skis: people tuck their feet into straps attached to 2 pieces of 2x8 lumber, and then they must coordinate their movement forward across about a 20 meter distance without falling over.
The sun was shining, many parents and friends came to watch, including school graduates, and there was a large concession stand selling a variety of food and icy treats for everyone.
What some of the foreign students noticed was how much more organized Japanese sport’s festivals are. From kindergartens right up to senior citizen’s homes, people will practice for days on end in several of the events, land-skis and skipping especially, just to do well on the day for group pride. Seiritsu has 4 half-day training sessions prior to the event day, with each grade all going to a soccer field to better get coordinated with their homeroom classmates.
Each homeroom also made a special flag, t-shirts and some students even dressed up in costumes when certain events happened. There was one student-athlete boy who ran the relay dressed as the animation character Sailor-Moon.
There are several key dates in the year for every school; Sport’s Festival, Culture Festival and Graduation.
From now until the end of September, all the school’s clubs will begin to focus on the Culture Festival as the next big school event here at the Tokyo Campus.
