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The Hakuba Ski Club--Home to Future Olympians? Kids in the village of Hakuba, Nagano Prefecture, consider themselves lucky to be living in a winter sports paradise. The village lies at the foot of the Hida Mountains, also known as the Northern Japan Alps. In the Nagano Olympic Winter Games to be held this coming February, Hakuba will host the downhill and super giant slalom alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, and ski jumping events.
It's no surprise that many of the kids of Hakuba are into these winter sports. All the elementary and middle schools in the village have sports clubs: These school teams all get together to practice as part of the Hakuba Ski Club.
The Hakuba Ski Club consists of three divisions: alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, and ski jumping. There are about 170 members from elementary- to high-school age, who practice and train for their sports about 10 hours a week--all year round! During the snowless summer, the members concentrate on building up their strength and training in other ways. The cross-country skiers practice on roller skis, and the ski jumpers keep right on jumping on a special plastic surface that's slippery like snow.
But the students don't do all their training close to home. The cross-country and ski-jumping squads head to the northern island of Hokkaido at the beginning of each winter to get some valuable time on the quality snow there. And this year, the Alpine skiers are spending some time training in the high mountains of the United States! The club members are excited about the Olympics coming to their hometown. Ibuki Ota, a sixth grader from Hakuba Kita Elementary School and a member of the Hakuba Ski Club's cross-country squad, says he'll be cheering for Japan's Olympic athletes to win gold medals at the Games: "I'll support Japan at the ski jumping competition, and I'll especially be cheering for Kenji Ogiwara to win the gold in the Nordic combined!"
And not all the club members will be just cheering--one member of the Alpine squad, 15-year-old Naoya Maruyama, will be racing in the Paralympic Games to be held right after the Olympics. He lost a leg in a car wreck when he was in elementary school, but the Hakuba Middle School ninth grader hasn't let that stop him from taking part in the upcoming competition as a representative of the Hakuba Ski Club--and all of Japan!
