The Gorin High School

In many nations which strive for international recognition in sporting achievement, there exist some schools designed purely for young sport talents to develop their skills further and still get some sort of high school qualification at the end of three years. Gorin HS is not one of these, even though many of the best athletes nationwide are Gorin graduates. Gorin HS (1800 students), the more low-profile Gorin JH (900 students), and now the ultimate extension Gorin University, aim as much as any other good academic institution to provide a wholesome education to its students, the only difference being in their educational route.

The Gorin motto proposes that "A healthy spirit can only be promoted in parallel with a healthy body; the way of the Olympic athlete." The true nature of Gorin's education system is not so much in driving towards sporting excellence, but in aiming for overall excellence using sports as the prime tool. It is typically physical challenges more than mental ones which place its subjects into intimate awareness of their own strengths, weaknesses and limitations, even more so in the case of young people who lack exposure in society. Gorin's system fully capitalizes on this to allow its students to gain thorough self-understanding through immersion in athletics and physical education. Consistent with this idea is the encouraged practice of students coaching other students of lower level in the same sport (e.g. Natsu coaching the Gorin JH volleyball team, Nagare coaching the Gorin HS swimming team), which further promotes their awareness in relation to the sport. A powerful fact often overlooked is that, despite the much greater proportion of the weekly timetable spent in playing sports (and thus correspondingly less time spent in classroom studies), Gorin HS students on average perform no worse in academic subjects compared to students from 'normal' schools.; this alone must say something for the strength in its system. This is also much appreciated by the students themselves, since they can devote wholehearted effort to their sports but not necessarily at expense of their other grades.

Another way in which Gorin HS differs from the 'athlete-factory' schools is that it is compulsory for students to participate in sports other than their own speciality. For example, he Gorin Newcomers Battle (a small sports event in June for first years only) requires competitors to play in a randomly selected game. Students concerned mainly about winning tournaments in their own game, such as Shoma, tend to be initially frustrated by this insistence of the school. But as Natsu and Roberto correctly point out , true master sportspersons should be able to adapt their bodies to learn any new physical skills quickly. (So Shoma isn't a true master sportsman. So what? ^^;;;) Of course, students also have a chance to show their particular expertise during the Gorin Festival (the main sports event of the year, occurring in November), when the school's best exponent of each sport is determned in direct contest!

Clearly Gorin's education system is heavily contingent on continuity, in other words students are only likely to gain full benefit of the system by going the whole distance through it. The entrance examination is almost completely based on athletic proficiency, and most Gorin HS students arrive from Gorin JH where the sports mentality has already been instilled in a less intensive environment. Six years of this education brings most Gorin HS graduates at least up to national level in their chosen sport, but with the coming of Project Justice, the system has been taken further with the new creation of Gorin University. Blessed with enormous funding allowing investment in the highest technology equipment, Gorin University has in terms of reputation already pushed aside all other physical education colleges with its superior educational coverage. As well as furthering its students' athletic development with better training resources, it offers degree courses in subjects such as Sports Medicine and Exercise Physiology, so that its students become scholars of physical cultivation as well as practitioners. Nagare, model graduate of Gorin HS and largely consdered its most talented athlete ever, hopes to set the standard for Gorin University as a member of its very first class together with Shuuichi and other dedicated students. Possessing such dedication as nurtured by the Gorin system, it is hard to imagine that they will disappoint, and it is certain that under no circumstances will they give up. This is the positive energy of the Gorin spirit.