Meioh High School

2026 season

Currently 1st in the Akita Prefectural League Division 1 with 39 points from 14 matches (13W 0D 1L, 79-6). Updated daily.

Playing style

The present team is built around a group of third-year players who came together as first- and second-years to win the Tohoku tournament in the 2025 school year. Its football is direct and attacking: in the 2026 Akita Division 1 it scored 79 goals in 14 matches. In the Tohoku new-season tournament it scored five against Gakuho Ishikawa and five against Aomori Yamada, then beat Shohei 2-1 and Seiko Gakuin 1-0 in the final. The squad is unusually mixed for a team from a rural prefecture. The 2026 Inter-High registration lists players from local clubs such as Blaublitz Akita's under-15 team alongside players from junior clubs in Saitama, Tochigi, Yamagata, Tokyo, Ibaraki, Shizuoka, Mie and Aomori, and many players board at the school. At the 2026 Inter-High the team's run was short: after a bye in the first round it drew 1-1 with Nissho Gakuen High School of Miyazaki in the second round (the last 32) and lost 3-5 on penalties.

Honours

History

• 1966 — The football club is founded at what was then the high school attached to Akita Junior College.
• 1983 — The school is renamed Akita Keizai Hoka University High School.
• 1984 — A former Japan national-team goalkeeper and captain, an Akita native, becomes head coach and stays until 1988. In his first summer the team reaches the Inter-High quarter-finals, at a tournament held in Akita. In the 1984–85 school year it also plays in the winter championship for the first time, going out on penalties to Taisha after a 1-1 draw.
• 1985–1989 — Further Inter-High appearances in 1985, 1987 and 1989, and a second winter championship in 1987–88 (a 0-1 defeat by Yokkaichi Chuo Kogyo).
• 1993–94 — A third winter championship, lost 0-2 to Sakuyo in the first round. It is the school's last national appearance for 27 years.
• 2007 — The school takes the name Meioh High School.
• 2018 — A new head coach arrives from outside the prefecture. He had coached at Gamba Osaka's junior-youth team, at Kunimi in Nagasaki and in the academies of Vissel Kobe and Nagoya Grampus, and he set out to build a team that "attacks with everyone and defends with everyone". In his first year the team reaches the Akita championship final for the first time in 19 years.
• 2020–21 — Meioh wins the Akita qualifying tournament and returns to the winter championship after 27 years, losing a seven-goal first-round match 3-4 to Naha Nishi.
• 2022 — A season in the Prince League Tohoku, the regional league, ends in tenth and last place and relegation to the Akita league. The team qualifies for both the Inter-High and the winter championship, where it loses its opening match 0-1 to Iizuka.
• 2023 — A second Inter-High in a row. In the winter championship (2023–24) Meioh beats Nago of Okinawa 2-0 at Komazawa Stadium in Tokyo for the school's first win at the tournament, then loses 0-1 to Horikoshi in the last 16.
• 2026 — A new coaching team, led by a former Japan high-school selection coach who once took Yachiyo of Chiba to third place in the winter championship, is now in charge. In February, at the Tohoku new-season tournament (for first- and second-year players of the 2025 school year), Meioh beats Aomori Yamada 5-2 and Shohei, a winter-championship semi-finalist, 2-1, then Seiko Gakuin 1-0 in the final. In June it wins the Akita Inter-High qualifiers without conceding, 18 goals in four matches, including 5-0 against holders Akita Shogyo in the final, to reach its seventh Inter-High and first since 2023. In September it completes the Akita Division 1 season as champions.

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 is the U-18 Premier League (EAST and WEST), then nine regional Prince Leagues, then the prefectural leagues. Akita belongs to the Tohoku region, so the league above the prefecture is 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. Japanese school years run from April to March, so the "2023" winter championship is played in late December 2023 and early January 2024.

• The top of the Akita pyramid. In 2026 Meioh plays in the first division of the Akita prefectural league (officially the Takamado Cup JFA U-18 Football League 2026 Akita, Division 1). It has eight teams, including Akita Shogyo, the strongest traditional school side in the prefecture, and the second team of Blaublitz Akita's academy. Below it are a second division and two parallel third divisions. The leading Akita teams go into a Tohoku-wide play-off at the end of the season for places in the Prince League Tohoku, where Meioh last played in 2022.
• Coaches from outside. The club's revivals have come when it brought in coaches with national experience: a Japan goalkeeper in the 1980s, a former Kunimi and J.League-academy coach in 2018, and now a former Japan high-school selection coach.
• A boarding team in a rural prefecture. Akita has a small population and long, snowy winters. Meioh builds its squads by recruiting widely: a large share of the 2026 Inter-High squad came from junior clubs outside Akita, from Aomori in the north to Saitama, Tokyo, Shizuoka and Mie, and those players board at the school.
• A school of athletes. The school is well known in Japan for its baseball team, which has sent several players to professional baseball, and the football club shares in the school's support for sport.

Former players

Meioh has not yet produced a current J.League player, and in its earlier years only a handful of former players reached professional football, most of them via university. None of those former players has an English spelling of his name published by the JFA, the J.League or a club, so they are not named on this page. Many recent graduates have gone on to university football, and the team that won the Tohoku tournament in 2026 is seen as the club's best chance yet of sending a player to the professional game.

The 2026 squad is not listed here either. None of the current players, and neither the head coach nor his predecessors, 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: 明桜高校.

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.