School Tail-Tag's Autumn Season Opens; Traditional Power Edagawa High Wins Its Opener

The school-league autumn season of tail-tag — a team sport rooted in Drifter culture, in which two teams of five try to snatch ribbons tied at the waist — opened on the 14th. As previously reported, it is the most popular sport among the ten profiled by this paper's sports desk. Edagawa Metropolitan High School's wall-racing club, only two years old with nine members, was eliminated in its opening match of the autumn qualifiers, previously reported; its tail-tag club, by contrast, is a 46-year-old institution among the city's schools. It opened the new season by beating Private Shiodome Gakuen 12 to 9, its third straight opening-day win.

Because tail-tag players with nonhuman features carry an actual tail in addition to their ribbon, the sport enforces a rule, previously reported for this competition, that a player's tail itself may never be touched. Edagawa's number 7, a second-year student and second-generation Drifter, led all scorers with four ribbons taken. "My tail isn't a ribbon, so nobody can take it — but it does get in the way sometimes when I run," he said with a laugh.

With the wall-racing club's own first-round elimination still fresh, previously reported, the tail-tag captain, a third-year, wore a complicated expression. "I know the wall-racing kids are frustrated. We just have forty-six years of room to breathe that they don't — it doesn't make us better." The tail-tag coach, in his 22nd year with the club, said, "Our school has both a strong club and one still building its strength. I think that's fine as it is."

The losing captain from Private Shiodome Gakuen took the defeat in stride: "Edagawa presses hard from the first half, and we couldn't get our ribbon positioning set in time. We still have a second match this autumn." Unlike the large-bracket student wall-racing tournament previously reported, tail-tag runs as a near round-robin league from September through November.

The school tail-tag league continues through November, with the champion earning the right to face a select team from the adult club Tokei Tails in a December exhibition. Edagawa's next match is scheduled for Wednesday of next week. In the first half, Edagawa took ribbons in quick succession to lead 12–3, but Shiodome Gakuen rebuilt its defensive coordination after the break and clawed back six ribbons down the stretch. "I was slow to notice their defense had changed in the second half," Edagawa's coach said. "Forty-six years in, and there's still a new mistake to make every season."

Edagawa's tail-tag club was founded in 1980, standing in stark contrast to its two-year-old wall-racing club, previously reported, as one of the more storied programs in the city's school sports. Wooden plaques listing every past captain's name line the clubroom wall. "I hope the wall-racing kids get something like these plaques of their own someday," the captain said. "I've heard we didn't win anything for our first ten years either."

This reporter noted: "A disappointing autumn and a proud one, sitting inside the same school building at the same time — that might not be so unusual anywhere."