Takeshi Nozawa: Supporting High School Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic with "Don't Stop the Sport"

I have been traveling around the country as a resource coach for the Japan Rugby Football Union's TID (Talent Identification and Development) program, but the invitational tournament scheduled for March in Kumagaya was canceled. The invitational tournament is a showcase for new third-year students, where universities come in droves to recruit.

University recruiters called me saying they were in trouble, and teachers at high schools told me that students' paths to higher education were not being decided at all. I felt I had to do something. So, I spoke with Kota Mogami, a classmate from the Rugby Football Club, and he connected me with Yuya Tanaka, a former Waseda basketball player. On May 14, we launched "Don't Stop Rugby" and "Don't Stop Basketball."

It's a system where high school students create videos to showcase their play and upload them to Twitter with the hashtag "#Don'tStopRugby." Famous players, rugby fans, and university officials then retweet them, leading to opportunities for higher education. The rugby side was featured on NHK's "News Watch 9" on May 20, and the number of posts grew exponentially.

Meanwhile, when I talked to friends in other sports, they said they were also in a lot of trouble and wanted to work together. So, on May 30, we held a cross-sport webinar-style talk event called "Don't Stop the Sport 2020" at the office of Ryuji Nakatake (former head coach of the Waseda University Rugby Football Club), the representative director of Sport Coaching Japan. People like Kana Oyama from volleyball and Ryunosuke Haga from judo participated.

This event gave the movement a solid form. Later, on the day the Summer Koshien was canceled, Daisuke Matsuzaka said in a sports newspaper interview that while the "Don't Stop Rugby" movement had been born, he wondered if baseball shouldn't do something too. This flow then spread to the entire sports world.

Currently, the rugby world has a system for nurturing young coaches in each of the nine blocks nationwide. I have been traveling across the country on weekends, serving as both a talent scout and a resource coach.

Meeting high school teachers in local areas and talking about the future of Japanese rugby over drinks at night, I gradually realized that there are many good players buried out there besides those selected for the high school national team. I wanted to create a system so that information could be gathered from all over the country.

I played rugby at Keio for a long time, and at Keio, there are no kids who have to quit club activities due to family circumstances. But such stories are common in rural areas. Witnessing that, I came to feel that while I can't create equality of outcome, I want to create equality of opportunity for them.

Compared to other sports, rugby has a high escalation rate (the rate of continuing the sport at the next stage), and over 20% of high school players continue rugby in university. However, that process is a black box and highly dependent on personal connections, making it a high hurdle for players who are not at powerhouse schools to play at the top level.

For example, there was a very good player in Kyushu, but he got injured and was left out of the representative team. As a result, he couldn't get a scholarship spot with tuition waivers. So, partly due to his parents' wishes, he decided to quit rugby. I thought, "That shouldn't happen." I wanted to change things through a system so that these kinds of injustices don't occur.

Since I played in a privileged environment like Keio, I thought this was normal, but it's not the norm for the rest of the world. I feel that I must give back somewhere for the good environment I was allowed to play in.

This time, all kinds of sports have actually stopped in a shocking way. I have a sense of crisis that if this continues for five or ten years, children who aim to be athletes will truly disappear.

There are currently three main pillars. First is the "development of a system where players can safely showcase their play," which I mentioned earlier. We have been using SNS, but we want to build it in a more closed space.

Also, there is a project called "Treasures of Youth." This is for kids whose tournaments or matches were canceled due to COVID-19; professionals provide live commentary and analysis for their final high school match or their best game as a gift to boost their motivation. We give them something they can look back on at a class reunion 30 years later and say, "Let's watch that."

Furthermore, we are running an "educational program to gain the power to live in the modern age." I think there are many things not taught in schools. The reason schools say "don't use SNS" is the same as saying "don't drive because we don't want car accidents."

But how should it be used? Regarding risks and returns, it's better to learn under the protection of a teacher during middle and high school rather than learning through painful experiences after becoming an adult. We are starting an attempt to make people feel closer to what true "life skills" are by having them watch dialogues between industry leaders and athletes.

Also, my junior Toshiaki Hirose, who serves as co-representative, held a leadership education class across different club activities at a high school in Kagawa Prefecture. Cultural and athletic clubs went beyond their boundaries to think about leadership. This is a project that probably wouldn't have happened without COVID-19.

It was to take responsibility and continue the work, including fundraising. I'm sure the "Don't Stop the Sport" mindset was already in our heads, and it was just made manifest by COVID-19.

In a sense, I feel that COVID-19 has provided a cross-cutting link for sports. Until now, the volleyball world had its common sense, and the rugby world had its own; there were walls between each organization, and we rarely spoke with people from other sports. However, as we talked about various things this time, the conversation gradually reached points like "this is weird about the rugby world" or "this is weird about the volleyball world."

Also, since "Don't Stop the Sport" is a fledgling social venture, the biggest challenge is increasing the number of people who support us. I want to sustain our activities based on donations from individuals and corporations who agree with this movement.

No one knows when COVID-19 will subside, but I want to continue our activities even after this crisis ends. I want the sports world itself to become more open, and I want athletes to shine more as themselves. This is what I want to value, and I want to keep running until I solve this awareness of the issues.

One is altruism. It's a given in rugby, but if there's an isolated player, no matter how tired you are, you go to help at top speed.

In these kinds of activities, if you seek something in return, it becomes harder to move. If you ask why we do this, it's exactly because of altruism, our purpose, and our sense of mission. If we don't focus on that, the scope of activity becomes infinite and the activities lose focus.

On the other hand, this activity is also the "youth" of us middle-aged men (laughs). In our online regular meetings every Wednesday, we all debate until late at night, saying this and that. There aren't many opportunities for this kind of thing once you become an adult. So, while it's an activity that is thoroughly focused on "giving," I actually feel that we are also being "given" something by the student-athletes.

What I was taught during the time I was pushing toward my goals as a player wearing the black and yellow tiger jersey was the importance of seeing things through and the importance of thinking and acting for oneself.

Almost everything went well for me when I was a student; except for not winning in my fourth year of university, everything was a success. I made it to the national team, and in my second year of university, we won the university championship. In high school, we made it to the best eight at Hanazono. Even at the Keio Futsubu School, we became number one in Eastern Japan. Those were days of gaining a sense of self-achievement, realizing that if we set a goal and hit it with all our might, good things happen.

However, after becoming a coach for the high school and university teams at Keio, I couldn't leave results and felt quite frustrated. What I learned then, as is often said, is that the Keio name is not something to lean on, but something to support yourself. I feel very strongly that I lacked that power to support it. Keio rugby was also where I could have such bitter learning experiences.

Also, in terms of human networks, there is no organization as strong as this. I am still greatly helped by it today; the fact that Nomura-kun became a sports reporter and we can work together is one example. Not just in the Rugby Football Club, but in Keio as a whole—for example, Shigeru Uehara, the president of Taisho Pharmaceutical, has been very helpful to me both at the Japan Association and at "Don't Stop the Sport." I don't think there's an organization that exceeds the connections of Keio people.

In rugby-related matters, Waseda is indeed at the base of Japan. My current boss as a resource coach is Mr. Nakatake, Hiroshi Otani, who gives me work at J SPORTS, is from Waseda, Tatsuhiko Otao, with whom I drink the most in a year, is from Waseda, and Ayumu Goromaru, with whom I did commentary, is also from Waseda. It's true that I've become more connected with Waseda since retiring.

We were rivals when we were active and I had frustrating experiences, but the relationships after becoming adults are deep. Conversely, regardless of where someone is from, I can quickly become friends with someone I feel is "serious."

I think Keio is the place that welcomes me most warmly, but staying only there would be contrary to the meaning of independence and self-respect.

The Japan Association has set a medium-term goal of bringing the World Cup to Japan again by 2050 and becoming number one in the world, so I hope to contribute to that. Since the area I am currently working in is youth talent scouting, I want to exert a positive influence on the rugby world from there.

I love solving things by creating systems. I want to use this general incorporated association to help people shine. To that end, I want to be someone who is always running at the front. Since I was a flanker, I'm good at charging ahead, but I'm not good at being the rearguard and assessing the battle situation (laughs).

Even with "Don't Stop Rugby," before I did it, I worried about what would happen if no one uploaded videos, but I took action. I think that breakthrough power is the keyword of my life. I want to be a top runner, be the one who gets scolded the most, and be thought of as a dangerous person (laughs).

That's right. I always call it the "Dosa Strategy," but I think doing the legwork (dosa-mawari) is an absolute requirement. I don't think people who just decide things indoors without doing that can change the world. First, go to the site. But let's do the legwork with a strategy.

I don't think the balance between family, main business, and rugby needs to be a clean 33% each; in the end, I think it's fine if it's balanced at the moment I die.

Of course, I take pride in the work and colleagues at Yamakawa Shuppansha. As a company, we naturally have to make a profit. However, to have a slightly broader perspective and exert some influence on public education to create value, I feel that my current strength and human network alone are insufficient.

I am 41 now, which is perhaps the best age in the sports world. So, I want to challenge myself to contribute in this place in parallel. I believe that becoming able to provide value to public education and competing in the sports world, which is ahead in my life, are not contradictory. I think that by accumulating human networks and hardships, it will eventually lead to a single story.

Yes. From the age of 21 until 32, I couldn't win at all. Until then, my life was exactly as I thought; I won the university championship at 20, became a national team member at 21, and wondered how far I would go.

But it didn't go that way, and at Kobelco, I hardly got to play in matches until I was 29. After that, I coached at Keio for four years but kept losing, and in the end, I was fired after a vote of no confidence was issued by my students. When I was stuck and couldn't go any further, I went to the MBA course at Globis University Graduate School.

At that time, I tried to do things for myself for the first time. Until then, my parents had put me in Keio since elementary school, and even for Kobelco, I went because they asked me to come. That was the first time I submitted an MBA application on my own.

And I set a goal to definitely be among the top 5% of high achievers, and I finally achieved it at the very end. At that time, I realized that the hardships of those 10 years were due to a lack of effort. I realized I could do it if I tried (laughs). It's the importance of repetition. This is the most important thing my mother taught me: if you are born an ordinary person, repeat. I'm the type of person who builds confidence by doing things like 500 sit-ups. The conclusion was effort.