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[March 03, 2006]

2ND LD: Komadai Tomakomai to pull out of nat'l baseball tournament+

(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)SAPPORO, March 3_(Kyodo) _ (EDS: UPDATING WITH SCHOOL PULLOUT OF NATIONAL BASEBALL TOURNEY)

Komazawa University's Tomakomai High School said Friday it will withdraw from this spring's national baseball championship after 14 students, including baseball players, were taken into police custody for illegal smoking and drinking.

The school, known as Komadai Tomakomai, said team manager Yoshifumi Koda and a teacher in charge of the baseball team resigned on the same day.

At a news conference, Katsumasa Shinohara, the school principal, expressed his intention to resign.

Koda steered the school baseball team to its first-ever consecutive victories in the 57-year-history of the annual summer national championship in 2004 and 2005.

The school's baseball team was selected to participate in this spring's national invitational tournament, which begins March 23.

According to police, 14 of the school's senior students smoked cigarettes and drank alcoholic beverages Wednesday at a restaurant in Tomakomai after a graduation ceremony. It is illegal in Japan for people under the age of 20 to smoke or drink alcoholic beverage.


The students admitted to smoking and drinking, police said. No baseball players registered to participate in the tournament were among them, according to school officials.

The school made headlines last August after a teacher in charge of the baseball team at that time beat a member of the team. The teacher was suspended from the post.

Last year, the school, an affiliate of Tokyo's Komazawa University, became the first school in 57 years to win consecutive titles at the national championship at Koshien Stadium in Hyogo Prefecture.

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