INTERBALLS!

Last week the TGH first year International course took to the courts for the 1st Year Ball Games Tournament. The annual event in which the entire grade's classes (minus the music students) compete for Eternal Glory! (and small certificates of achievement)

Here are the girls during the warm-up stretches, gesturing as to our ambitious aims: 2nd place all the way! I guess now is the time to confess that, as coach, I didn't exactly have high hopes before the tournament since International classes have posted notoriously bad results in previous years. But wait!...

Those classes were all lacking in something very much present and accounted for in our small but spunky gang of girls: jocks! Yep, past InterClasses are usually wiped out in the Dodgeball competition but this year, although we didn't place, we hung with the best- going to overtime in a flurry of dodging, ducking, diving and... err... dodging!

On to volleyball- "Hey Narumi, do you know the name of Snoopy's cousin and Buffy's boyfriend?"

Narumi: "Yes. I think they're both named SPIKE!

We made it to the finals in volleyball but lost in the deciding set; not bad!

I thought Basketball would be as painful to watch as it is for me to play since two of our girls are on the TGH Basketball team and therefore banned from this portion of the games (they helped referee instead).  We were down to only 9 players, but one of those players happened to be the diminutive yet feisty Mizuki, who changed her sport from Bball in Junior High School to Track & Field at Tokiwagi. She tore up and down the court like a whirling dervish and had stamina to spare, but of course there is no `I` in `TEAM` and the other girls gave their all as well, supporting and striking when the chances came. We went all the way to the finals again and got even closer than in volleyball. In fact, I would say we were at least equal, if not slightly better than the eventual champions- we just had less luck on our side. Oh well, we'll get `em next year!