Japanese high-school soccer-club

Japanese high school soccer club

When I started working at my Japanese-high-school, it was all new for me and had to get used to the older students with their peculiar hormone driven attitudes. Being a manager of the high school soccer-club, I enthusiastically went down to the soccer pitch and kicked the ball around with the boys of the soccer-club a couple of times a week. However, after a month or so, the soccer-club member whom I had in my English classes as well, became very lazy during my classes. I didn’t know what to do with them since I wished to maintain a good relation with them. They were talking, sleeping, and walking during my classes and I often kindly asked them to pay more attention to the lesson. I was very concerned with maintaining a friendly relation with them. But I came to realize that I was not treating the rest of the class fairly compared my soccer-club kids. I decided to act more strictly during my classes to maintain control.

Here in Japan it seems that the members of a high-school-soccer-club always have to take on a kind of wild, rebellious look. This creates trouble for them because when playing matches with other schools the image of a school depends on the ones representing it. So when their hair, clothes and attitude is not in order, they will be (have to be) scolded. When I started reminding my students of their hair and attitude issues they became increasingly unhappy and absolutely boycotted my classes. It was a hard year… Most members of the then second grade had many issues with their attitude. Some were temporarily suspended from school for various reasons, and others had to stay in detention class. Gradually this also affected the soccer-club and most quit during the year.

We as managers should have been stricter from the beginning and should have given more guidance. When the third graders left the soccer-club to prepare for their university entrance exams, we were left with about eight members only.

This year, new first graders signed up and we currently have sixteen members…