Featured Club / Dojo - Nobeoka Sumo Dojo

[mikawa 1,794]

Kotoeko Juniors

Location - Awanomyo-machi (粟野名町), Nobeoka, Miyazaki
Keiko - Unknown

With the completion of the sumo dohyo in Kotoeko's hometown in 2017, Nobeoka Sumo Dojo was founded. As of the end of 2019, they have 18 club members in total, 7 of which are girls. They are coached by Kishimoto Takeshi (岸本 武).

Despite being such a young sumo club, Nobeoka Sumo Dojo already have had their fair share of success. Not only have multiple members achieved fantastic results in regional tournaments (coming first or second in their year groups), Nobeoka as a team have even managed a second-place finish at the Kyushu tournament. Miyazaki TV went to one of their training sessions to find out more about the club:

 

The club's star members are undoubtedly the Kai siblings. Older sister Kai Hatsuki (甲斐 葉月) was the Grade 6 national girls' champion, while younger brother Kai Yota (甲斐 陽太) was a Wanpaku quarter-finalist last year in Grade 4.

As you can imagine, there's a nice sibling rivalry going on in the Kai household, Yota really wants to one-up his sister and become a national champion himself. His best chance so far came in February 2020, when he overcame both the Primary School Yokozuna (Nakamura Hayato) and the Kumamoto champion (Sato Iroha) to reach the Hakuho Cup final. Kai Yota (on the left) stepped up to face his larger opponent from Niigata Prefecture, with his sister watching on from the stands: