Kyoto International High School, a small institution with just 138 students which used to be a Korean school, won the National High School Baseball Championship at Koshien Stadium on Friday with a 2-1 victory over Tokyo’s Kanto Daiichi High School in a gripping 10-inning showdown.
The victory marks the school’s first championship, and the first by a Kyoto school since Heian High School’s triumph 68 years ago. The game was a tense pitching duel between Kyoto International’s Rui Nakazaki and Kanto Daiichi’s Tetsushin Hatanaka. Both starters excelled, and the game remained scoreless through nine innings and went into extra frames — a first for a Summer Koshien final in 18 years.
The 10th inning was played under tiebreaker rules specific to high school baseball, which place runners on first and second with no outs to start the frame. Kyoto International capitalized in the top of the 10th, taking a 1-0 lead on a bases-loaded walk and adding an insurance run on a sacrifice fly by Seiya Mitani. In the bottom half, sophomore reliever Ikki Nishimura allowed one run on a groundout but struck out the final hitter to secure the win.
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