６月１６日（木曜日）２０２２
多賀中学校の体育祭を午前中覗かせてもらってきました。昔から変わらないのは挨拶の後のラジオ体操だけで他はコロナ禍ということもあってか半世紀以上前の私の頃とはすっかり様変わりしていました。
まずスピーカーから聞こえるのは今風のラップ調の音楽。ブラスバンドの力強く軽快な音楽ではありませんでした。学年を通して赤と青の団対抗になっていて、最初は「８の字跳び」。何だろうと思っていたら、赤青の2チームが生徒達二人が回す大縄を順番に跳んでいくというものです。これが回す縄の回転が速いのなんのって。それを隙間なく一人ひとり、あるいは２人、３人一緒の時もあったりで２分間次々に跳んでは回ってまた順に跳んでいきます。体育の時間に練習をしているのでしょうが、あまりに上手に皆んなが跳んでいくのにびっくりしました。集中力とチームワーク。１年生、２年生、３年生と体格が大きくなっていきますが、上級生になるほど男女皆んな上手になっていました。初めて見たゲームでしたが面白かったです。
続いてはリレー。昔は学級で足が速い人が選ばれてリレーに出ていましたが、ここでは全員参加。男子と女子が同時に走るのは体力的に差があり気の毒に思いましたが。速い生徒の走り方は見ていて気持ちがいいもの。ただ、スタート時に先生が「On Your Mark」「Get Set」などと英語で指示をしていたのが気になりました。生徒は気分がいいのかな？国際試合ではないのだから「位置について」「用意！」と言えばいいのに…とここでも日本語が失われていく寂しさを感じました。とは言え全体を仕切っていた女性のベテラン先生の歯切れの良い進行で生徒も先生たちも力を合わせて動いていました。
I went to see the Sports Festival in Taga Junior High School in the morning. It has been continuing since decades ago, but only Radio Calisthenics after morning greetings by a school principal was the same from when I was a student, but other parts were totally different from the age more than 50 years ago.
First of all, the music from the speakers was new, some kind of rap-ish music compared to brass band music which was popular in my age. Second, there was team competition divided into red and blue teams instead of individual competition. The first program was "Jumping in one rope with a group one after another". It was so fast to turn the rope and students came, jumped and got out without any interval. Some students came in two or even three together without getting caught in the rope. It was just amazing! Students were required to concentrate and work as a team. One senior students' group finished with only one miss in the two minutes of jumping!
The next program was relay. When I was a middle school student, we selected our classmates for the relay who were good at short distance running, but the relay I saw was different. All students participated in the relay. It was a mixed race, so sometimes girls and boys ran together which I felt was unfair. It was probably because the school needed to save the time to run the Sports festival. Anyhow, the running form of the faster students was so beautiful and I enjoyed watching them. At the start, the teacher said to the students "On your mark" and " Get set" in English which was a bit surprising because we have Japanese phrases meaning the same and we had been following them in my school days. It was not an international competition and I felt sorry to have to replace those Japanese words with English.
Senior physical teacher was giving clear instruction to students and other teachers and the Sports Festival was well organized. I enjoyed it very much. 
