Your effort will pay you back-Mizuki

Your effort will pay you back

Mizuki Kuwahara

I took entrance exam and I entered Ritsumeikan Uji Junior High School, which is attached school of Ritsumeikan University. Although I had to get good grades in my courses to get in University, I was guaranteed to enter Ritsumeikan Uji High School and Ritsumeikan University without taking entrance exams. I had to study, but I had not take entrance exams so I did not need to go to calm school; therefore I had plenty of time to focus on club activity.

Belong to club activity was compulsory in my Junior High School. I was wondering which club activity I should join; baton or basketball. I chose to belong to baton team because when I took pre-lesson, I found it is really cool, I had learnt hip-hop dance before, and the main point was practice is twice in a week! I thought it is going to be easy to handle both study and baton twirling. When I was around grade 3, the Baton Twirling was boom among elementary school students, so I had played with “toy baton” which was made by plastic and many kinds of colors; however I had never taken lessons from baton coach before I enter Junior High School.

While High School team had competition, Junior High team was not competing before my generation entered, because school was quiet new and team didn’t have enough members to compete, so we just practiced many skills. The half of my first year in Junior High, until the end of summer, we did not have lessons a lot. However, influence of the High School team competing in competition, we decided to try to enter competition. By our coaches’ “やるからには本気で取り組む” (yarukaraniha honnkide torikumu) spirit; which is if you decided to do it, do it seriously, practice, put effort a lot, and try really hard, our goal was set on get Gold prize in National competition.

We had competition in June, September, November (Region Competition) and January (if we get ticket to go to Nationals in Region Competition). Similar as figure skates, in competition, the judges give us points based on what levels of skill we use, how dancing and twirling and positioning (composing) are matching with music and theme and each members’ dancing and twirling are harmonizing well with other teammates. The judges gave as points and its average effect which prize we can get, Gold, Silver or Bronze. Gold is for 85-100, Silver is for 84-70 and less than 69 is considered as Bronze.

Like other sports or artistic things such as piano, usually the famous baton twirlers started learning it when they are little. In my team, there was a senpai, who started baton twirling when she was three, and she was really good at both twirling and dancing. However I and same grades teammates start it from 12 years old, so there were huge gap between her. We were newly formed team and there was no history that is made by seniors, so we had to practice a lot for competing and win over them. We practiced every day except Wednesday during the semester, and 9am to 6pm everyday during the second summer vacation. Sometimes we got fight with our coach and instructor because our opinion were different and we discussed long time until both agrees on it.

In first and second competition we had, we got silver prize, but from third competition, we could get gold prize in a low. In grade 8 year, we could not go to National Competition. I remember clearly when I heard the announcement, about which team can go to Nationals, did not call “Ritsumeikan Uji junior high school”. We put many efforts and I didn’t hang out with my friends that year, but still we could not go to Nationals. I knew that going to nationals is not easy, but we had hope. The result was if we had one more point we could go to nationals.

Next year, new team consisted with nine grade 9 members include me and 25 new members from grade 8. The theme for this year’s routine was “くのいち～女の戦い～” (Kunoichi ~onnna no tatakai~) which described the fighting scene of the Japanese lady Ninjya with the music which used Japanese flute, Shakuhachi, and western style drums. As same as previous year, we practiced every day and had all day practice and as same as not easy year. It was really big team and hard to unite everyone’s motivation and we had meeting many times. I went through slump this year, but I over came it. Our team got tickets to Nationals. I remember when I heard announcement that said our team name as clearly as when I heard that we could not go to Nationals. I was really happy and I remember I screamed and cried so hard because of happiness and relief. In nationals, surprisingly our team got Gold prize! It was unexpected, because it was first time to competing in there, so we were very happy and we learned that the efforts that we make will pay us back.

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This is video of National competition when I was grade 9. There are many mistakes and drops so it was not perfect performance… and sorry about the video quality is really low and cannot see baton well…