Why a “real baseball girl” who has stood on the mound at the Koshien Stadium decided to try her hand at gravure in a swimsuit for the first time!

She was runner-up in the national championship three years after the baseball team was established!

Rino Matsumoto led Kochi Chuo High School to a national runner-up finish as a pitcher in high school. She was also selected for the women’s high school hardball team, and has experience playing against the Kobe Chiben, a grass baseball team formed by Ichiro, who is in the news for being inducted into the Japan-U.S. Baseball Hall of Fame. We interviewed her about her thoughts on her gravure challenge and her life in baseball so far, having been raised entirely on baseball.

–First of all, why did you accept this gravure job?

When I was asked by FRIDAY to do a photogravure, I was honestly very worried. I had never worn swimsuits or SNS I had experienced that people look at women doing sports in a strange way. But I decided to do this gravure because it would be a good opportunity for people who didn’t know me to become aware of me, and also because it was a time when I wanted to try something new. I think there are sportswomen who are worried about not being able to wear the clothes they like because of their body shape, and I would be happy if my gravure, in which my muscularity was a problem, could give hope to women who play sports, even if just a little.

–Were there any memorable moments during the shoot?

I think the most memorable moment of the shoot was when I was wearing a bathing suit and uniform at the baseball stadium. I think I was able to express myself the most because it was a place I was familiar with. I was happy to be photographed in my swimsuit at a baseball stadium that I have taken care of for so long, but at the same time I felt embarrassed, which is an indescribable feeling.

–You are currently active as a female baseball TikToker.

What made you start playing baseball in the first place? I started playing baseball when I was in the fourth grade. My older brothers also played baseball, but they were also very smart. I was not very good at studying (laughs). (laughs) But I was good at sports, so I started thinking that my parents would praise me if I played baseball.

–Were you good at sports from elementary school?

I’m not proud of it, but I got a perfect score on the sports test in gym class from elementary school to high school. I was also good at grip strength. The strongest I had was I was a little over 50 kg. I was a little over 50 kg at my strongest.

–You started playing baseball in elementary school and softball in junior high school.

I stopped playing baseball in the middle of thesixth grade.The reason was harassment due to intra-team competition. I heard that the reason for the harassment was that there was a kid who couldn’t play because he was in the same defensive position as me. Because of that, I joined the softball team in junior high school. When I joined the team, the shortstop position was open, andI played shortstop as if I could do it because Ihad played baseball(laughs).

–(laughs)” Then you started playing baseball again in the second year of junior high school, didn’t you? Did you get an offer to go to Kochi Chuo High School?

I heard that in junior high school club teams in the Kanto and Kansai areas, the coaches of strong high schools personally visit the area to gather players. However, junior high school club teams in Kyushu and other areas do not have a comprehensive list of female players, so the number of girls who want to play baseball is small, so it is surprisingly easy to get into a high school that has a girls’ baseball team. The coach of my club team invited me to go to a high school where I could play baseball, and I went to Kochi Chuo High School without much hesitation.

–At the high school, you had to live in a dormitory, didn’t you?

The rules of the dormitory were strict. There was an early night roll call, and we were not allowed to go out at night, so we couldn’t go anywhere. I really had to go back and forth between school and the dormitory every day. Also, we had to keep our rooms clean at all times, and there was a limited number of items to share, such as an iron, so the rules for communal living were quite detailed.

–How was practice for the women’s baseball team?

How was practice for the women’s baseball team? It was a daily occurrence that some of the girls were practicing while crying. I think it was the toughest high school among all girls’ high school baseball teams. We won the national runner-up title in our junior year of high school, but if you ask me if our high school baseball team originally had a lot of very good girls, it wasn’t really so.”

–So you don’t have a winning high school team?

I think our age group was one of the best in the country for women’s baseball. Our age group was the first generation of the women’s baseball team. We were the first generation of the women’s baseball team, so we had no history at all. The really good girls went to Kobe Koryo, Rimusho-sha, Fukuchiyama Seibi, Kyoto Ryoyo, and other high schools that were considered powerhouses in women’s baseball. I went to Kochi Chuo High School because I was a first-generation student. Many of the girls who went to Kochi Chuo High School may or may not have played on their own team in junior high school, and I hate to say it, but we were just a group of girls who could not go to a high level high school or just wanted to have fun playing girls baseball. So we endure hard practice and from the inauguration 3 years after its establishment So, after three years of hard training, we were able to win the semifinals.

–You were able to pitch on the Koshien stage in the finals of the national tournament, weren’t you?

The year we were runners-up, they accidentally changed the rules so that only the final game of the national tournament was played at Koshien, and girls were allowed to play in the final game. The moment I actually stood on the mound, I felt a strange sense of nostalgia because I had been watching high school baseball tournaments at Koshien on TV since I was little.”