Yonago Kita High School

2026 season

Currently 7th in the Premier League WEST with 18 points from 13 matches (5W 3D 5L, 26-22). Updated daily.

Playing style

The identity is a fast, collective counter-attacking game — everyone defends, everyone attacks — built on a running capacity that comes directly from how the team trains. Under NAKAMURA Shingo, who took over in 2016, that has been joined by high pressing and a properly organised build-up, so the side can hold the ball against academy teams rather than only absorb and break.

Honours

The side is also dominant in all three of its prefectural competitions. It came back to the Premier League at the first attempt after relegation, winning the 2023 play-off in extra time.

History

• 1965 — The football club is founded, and for thirty-five years it is one team among many in a small prefecture.
• 2000 — JOICHI Noriyuki becomes manager. His stated purpose — "our job is to make everyone climb up" — sets the recruiting policy: players who were not selected by professional academies, and players who are not finished yet.
• 2009 — Runners-up at the Inter-High with a side containing SHOJI Gen, then a second-year, and quarter-finals at the national youth championship in the same season. Tottori's football is suddenly national news.
• 2016 — JOICHI moves up to director of football and NAKAMURA Shingo, his assistant for years and a holder of the JFA A licence, becomes manager. The handover works, which is the hard part.
• 2017 — Quarter-finals at the winter championship, with SANO Kaishu in midfield.
• 2021 — Runners-up at the Inter-High, with SANO Kodai.
• 2023 — Relegated from the Premier League and promoted straight back through the play-off.
• 2026 — A ninth season in the Premier League WEST.

Development pathway

Four things explain a school from a prefecture of half a million people competing with academies from cities of millions.

• Training on the surfaces nobody wants. The main pitch is clay, divided into quarters so that whoever is not playing is doing physical work rather than waiting. The hardest session of the week is 80 minutes on the sand of the Japan Sea coast, in two groups of 40. Unstable ground builds the legs and the core, and — the coaches would say — the willingness to take one more step.
• A junior high school inside the same group. Yonago Hokuto Junior High trains alongside the senior team, with mixed games as routine. Players arrive at 15 already used to the speed and the contact, and already knowing the system.
• Recruiting on ambition. The club deliberately looks for players rejected by J.League academies and for ambitious players from small provincial clubs. The 2026 squad includes players from academies in Hiroshima and Okayama and from clubs across the Kansai region, the Chugoku and Shikoku areas and central Japan. The chip on the shoulder is part of the specification.
• Sports science, done simply. Since 2019 players have eaten rice balls made by the dormitory staff before and after training, to stop the glycogen depletion that heavy sessions cause. It is not glamorous, and it is exactly the kind of basic thing a provincial school can do as well as anyone.

Former players

• SANO Kaishu (midfielder, 1.FSV Mainz 05) — a Japan international. In his first Bundesliga season he played all 34 matches and led the league for distance covered, duels won, interceptions and sprints. He was the midfield of the 2017 quarter-final team.
• SANO Kodai (midfielder, PSV Eindhoven) — his younger brother, who wore the number 10 here as a first-year and reached three winter tournaments. He was called into the Japan squad in September 2026.
• SHOJI Gen (defender, FC Machida Zelvia) — converted from forward to centre-back at this school, a starter for Japan at the 2018 World Cup, and a career that took in France before returning home.
• OKADA Yamato, SUZUKI Shinnosuke and YAMADA Yosuke (a goalkeeper) — all reached the J.League through university.
• BABA Takumi — a professional career built in the JFL and J3.

Two routes run in parallel here: straight from school to a professional club, as the Sano brothers did, and through university, as most of the others did. For a 15-year-old choosing a school, that matters.

Players to watch in 2026

Players worth knowing in the 2026 season:

• KUMANO Shunsuke (defender, third year, no. 4) — the captain, a centre-back since his first year, and named in the Japan High School Select training squad in two consecutive years. In March 2025 he made the selection itself.
• TAKASE Sota (goalkeeper, third year, no. 1) — first choice, and the stand-in captain.
• KANESADA Shuga (midfielder, third year, no. 10) — came from FC Viparte, the same junior club as the Sano brothers.
• NARA Aoshi (midfielder, third year, no. 8) — from a club in Gunma, at the other end of the country.
• HORA Ryuto (midfielder, third year, no. 11) — the squad's top scorer this season, mostly from the bench.
• KUROSAKI Ko (forward, third year, no. 14) — back after nearly two years out injured, and a calm reader of the game.
• SHIMIZU Taisei (defender, third year, no. 22) — an ever-present who scores from set pieces.
• NARITA Tenmu (defender, second year, no. 3) — from Gamba Osaka's junior youth team in Kadoma, and already settled in the back line.

The squad is drawn from all over Japan, which for a school in Tottori is the whole argument: players come here because of what the programme does, not because they live nearby.

Notes

Full profile in Japanese, with the current squad list and every result: 米子北高校.

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.