One of the players who shone the brightest in this World Cup was 19-year-old Nishida Yuji. He was ranked 3rd in the best scorer rankings (174 points), 5th in the best attacker rankings (55.38% success rate), and the best server rankings (0.69 points per set), far ahead of the others, and was selected as the best opposite of the tournament. At 186cm tall, he is quite small for a volleyball player, so who would have expected him to become such a great player in such a short time? He became famous in the volleyball world after his outstanding performance in the V Premier League 2017/18 when he was a high school student prospective player, but I actually knew him before that.
It was February 2017. I was in Osaka at the time and went to see the All Japan Junior All-Star Dream Match. This tournament is held every year after the Spring High Volleyball Tournament, gathering promising high school sophomores and under, and there was one player who stood out from the rest at the time. That was Nishida, a sophomore at Kaisei High School (at the time).
Nishida spiking the ball (photo by author)
He had been playing opposite since then, but his spikes and serves, delivered from a supple form, overwhelmed the others, and I thought, "This guy is crazy." The other players around him were probably all promising, but Nishida was on a different level. At least, that's how it seemed to me. I could only see him. I thought he'd be a big star soon. And my prediction was spot on, and Nishida was selected to represent Japan in the Asian Youth Championships, which began in March of that year, but he was content to be a reserve opposite player at the tournament. At the time, Miyaura Kento, who was born early in the year and was also left-handed, was a third-year student at Chinzei High School (now a third-year student at Waseda University), and was evaluated by the higher-ups as being better than him. I knew that Nishida was also good at receiving, so I was hoping he would play on the outside, but the starting outside positions were taken by classmates and underclassmen Saeki (currently a second-year student at Tsukuba University) from Higashi Fukuoka and Otsuka (currently a first-year student at Waseda University) from Rakunan (and Saeki was really terrible when I saw him at the aforementioned Dream Match, so I was even more dissatisfied lol). The Japanese Youth Team won the tournament and earned a place in the World Youth Championship in August of the same year, so I wanted Nishida to do his best at the World Youth Championship, but he was even left off the bench at the World Youth Championship. Furthermore, Kaisei High School was defeated in the Mie Prefecture preliminaries for the Spring High School Volleyball Tournament, and they were unable to participate in the National Championships in succession from the Inter-High School Championships. I think it was very disappointing for him. However, these events ignited the young samurai's fighting spirit, leading him to make the challenging choice of becoming a high school graduate V-Leaguer instead of going to university. And while his classmates were doing well in the Spring High School Volleyball Tournament, he exploded on his own in the V-League, the JTEKT Stings. His performance was highly evaluated, and due to the absence of Shimizu, who had been the national team's opposite for many years, due to injury, the player who was not selected for the youth national team also quickly grabbed a place on the senior national team. His subsequent success on the national team is well known to everyone.
But I think he really has the ability. If he had been a starter in the youth team, if he had gone to Spring High, if he had chosen to go to college, if he hadn't joined JTEKT, if Shimizu hadn't been injured, if even one of those things had been different, Nishida probably wouldn't be who he is today.
In short, I'm happy that a player I've had my eye on for a while has become so amazing lol. Keep up the good work, Nishida-kun!!
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