News short – Masashi Ebinuma to become athlete/coach starting April 1

Park 24, the trade team of 2016 Rio bronze medalist, Takato Naohisa, and managed by 1992 Barcelona gold medalist, Hidehiko Yoshida, announced on their website today that double-olympic bronze medalist, Masashi Ebinuma will take on coaching responsibilities for the men’s team while concurrently competing as an athlete. He will join his older brother, Satoru Ebinuma as coach of the men’s team, while former world champion, Ryuji Sonoda will move to become the head coach of the newly formed women’s team. Hidehiko Yoshida will continue on as the general manager of the team.

The placement of Sonoda as the women’s head coach is fairly suspect given his conduct in the scandal concerning the Japanese women’s national team that took place several years ago. The scandal was large enough that it created a complete overhaul of the coaching staff as well as executives in the All-Japan Judo Federation. Not only are there ethical and moral concerns of such a move, but the precedent this sets leaves much to be desired. Hopefully, mental and physical well-being of the young women joining the team will take priority over competition results..

As to Ebinuma, we wish him the best of luck in his new career trajectory and we look forward to seeing him in action as his long and illustrious career continues on.