Haguro High School

2026 season

Currently 5th in the Yamagata Prefectural League Division 1 (the Y League) with 29 points from 16 matches (9W 2D 5L, 34-18). Updated daily.

Playing style

The head coach is a former Haguro player. After graduating he played at university, and since 2015 he has coached at the school and at SUNFLAP F.C., a local junior club. 2026 is his first season in charge, and he took the team to the winter championship at the first attempt. Before him the team was led for many years by a former Montedio Yamagata player who began coaching at Haguro in 2000 and now has the title of general manager; he was the head coach named in the official JFA records when Haguro played at the winter championship in 2021–22 and 2022–23. The club's slogans are "Passion, affection, gratitude" and "Think and act, and be proud".

The 2026 Yamagata qualifying tournament showed a team that could come back in close matches. Haguro entered in the third round and beat Yamagata Kogyo 8-1. In the quarter-finals it drew 2-2 with Yamagata Meisei, the holders and a round-of-16 team at that summer's Inter-High, and won the penalty shoot-out 5-4. It beat Nichidai Yamagata 4-2 in the semi-finals. In the final on 24 October at ND Soft Stadium Yamagata it was level 2-2 with Yonezawa Chuo after 90 minutes, took the lead in the first half of extra time and added a fourth goal to win 4-2.

Honours

History

• 1963 — The school opens as Haguro Technical High School. It is renamed Haguro High School in 1989.
• 2000 — A former Montedio Yamagata player starts coaching the football team.
• 2004 — Haguro reaches the winter championship for the first time and goes through to the third round (the last 16).
• 2010–2011 — Haguro plays at the winter championship in both seasons, and at the Inter-High in 2010 and 2011. In 2011 it also plays in the second division of the Prince League Tohoku and finishes fifth of eight.
• 2012 — Haguro wins the Yamagata Inter-High qualifying tournament for the fifth year in a row. At the national finals it reaches the quarter-finals, winning two penalty shoot-outs on the way. It is the first Yamagata team to reach that stage since Nichidai Yamagata in 1989, and equals the prefecture's best result at the tournament.
• 2015–2019 — Inter-High appearances in 2015, 2018 and 2019, and winter-championship appearances in 2017–18 and 2018–19.
• 2021–2022 — Back-to-back winter-championship appearances, both ending in narrow first-round defeats.
• 2023 — At the Inter-High in Hokkaido, its tenth appearance, Haguro beats Matsusho Gakuen 1-0 before losing to Kochi. In the autumn it loses the winter qualifying final to Yamagata Meisei.
• 2024 — Runners-up in both Yamagata qualifying tournaments, losing the Inter-High final to Yamagata Meisei and the winter final to Tokai University Yamagata.
• 2025 — Reaches the quarter-finals of the Inter-High qualifiers and the semi-finals of the winter qualifiers.
• 2026 — A new head coach takes charge. Haguro loses 0-1 to Nichidai Yamagata in the third round of the Inter-High qualifiers, but in October it wins the winter qualifying tournament, beating Yonezawa Chuo 4-2 after extra time in the final, and returns to the national championship for the first time since 2022–23.

Development pathway

For readers new to Japanese youth football: high-school teams and J.League academies play in the same national league pyramid. At the top are the U-18 Premier League (EAST and WEST), then nine regional Prince Leagues, then the prefectural leagues. Haguro plays in Division 1 of Yamagata's prefectural U-18 league (known locally as the "Y League" or "Y1"), one level below the Prince League Tohoku. Two high-school tournaments carry even more prestige than the league: the summer Inter-High and the winter championship, which is televised nationally and ends at the National Stadium in January.

• Facilities on campus. The school has its own football ground and a boarding house for the football club. Players train for two and a half to three hours on weekdays.
• Former players as coaches. Several of the coaches at SUNFLAP F.C., a club in Tsuruoka that began as a football school in 2015 and set up an under-15 team in the 2019 school year, are Haguro graduates, and the head coach of the high-school team is one of them. Several players in the current Haguro squad came from SUNFLAP, although neither club describes the relationship as a formal partnership.
• Players from further away. The squad also includes players from junior clubs in the Tokyo area, such as Setagaya FC and FC Shibuya.
• Study after school. According to the club, about 80 per cent of its players go on to university or vocational college, and in the 2022 school year four went to universities in the top division of the Kanto university league.

Former players

The club's best-known former players are from its early years. They include a Brazilian midfielder who later played for Kyoto Sanga F.C. in 2008, and a graduate who went to Spain after school, played in the Spanish lower divisions and later signed a professional contract with Europa Point FC in Gibraltar's top division. No Haguro graduate was in Japan's squad for the 2026 World Cup. Their names are not romanised here because no English spelling has been published by the JFA, the J.League or a club.

Players to watch in 2026

The 2026 squad is not listed here. None of the current players, and neither the head coach nor the general manager, has an English spelling published by the JFA, the J.League or a club, so their names are not romanised on this page.

Notes

Full profile in Japanese, with the current squad list and every result: 羽黒高校.

Where a player has no official English spelling published by the JFA or the J.League, the name is shown in Japanese.

See also: Premier League standings and how youth football works in Japan.