CAMP ZAMA, Japan — A deafening silence hung over the athletic office on this United States Army post where roughly 40 teenagers were lying on the floor, nearly on top of one another.
They were members of the Zama Middle High School football team, and they were clearing their thoughts and slowing their breathing in preparation for their homecoming game. Two years after adopting a mindfulness program, the Trojans were 3-0 and on their way to a second consecutive winning season. They ultimately finished 6-0 and won the Far East title in their division.
It is true that high school football is in decline in America, where participation has dropped 10 percent in the past decade, even in football hotbeds like Texas, Florida and Nebraska. And safety concerns have cast a pall over the sport, which remains wildly popular but is battling a perception that playing it will lead to long-term health issues, including brain damage.
But to see football in action at this military post in Japan is to understand it as something else: a connection to a land an ocean away and to a game in which the main drama is about victory and defeat.
“We were not winning the years before,” Carmen Middleton, the team’s mindfulness coach, said. “It’s not something that happened overnight.”
From 2013 to 2017, the Zama Trojans went through some hard times, including seasons in which they won only one game, typically the homecoming matchup.
So while winning consistently may be new to Zama, football is not.
It has been played in Japan since before World War II, brought by Christian missionaries. There are now thousands of players and hundreds of teams at all levels in Japan.
The school on this military base has fielded a football team since 1958, providing comfort on a base that was once home to the Imperial Japanese Army.
Home is a theme that often comes up in conversations about football.
“We do it to connect our kids to home and to give them as much of an American high school experience as possible,” said Jodi Hernandez, a Spanish and language arts teacher at the school who attended the game. “Football connects all of us. I’m a nerd and the coach of the debate team, and I still come. With football, everyone can participate. It just gets people out.”
There are 461 students at Zama, so the 39 active members of the football team make up 8.5 percent of the student body.
Homecoming games at Zama, about 25 miles southwest of Tokyo, are similar to those in the United States. Parents and students run a concession stand, classmates paint their favorite player’s number on their cheeks and, in Zama’s case, the homecoming queen is a manager for the team.
“Football is everything on a base,” Middleton said. “It’s just so ingrained in our DNA as Americans. You can take the Americans out of America, but we are still going to bring football with us.”
Source: Football - nytimes.com
