Dear Coaches and Team Reps,
Thank you for participating in the 2009 Nikkei Games 3-on-3 and 4-on-4
co-ed basketball tournament. This year's tournament covered two
days and had 388 teams and 1,519 participants, making this the largest
tournament in the history of the Nikkei Games. The best part was
we gave out nearly 1,250 medals and awards this weekend.
It is through your participation and support that made the tournament
possible. We are very thankful and appreciative of your
support. We trust that you, your teams and families and friends
had a great time. Hopefully, they enjoyed being back at the
beautiful Pyramid as well as the excitement and fast-paced games of the
3-on-3 half court format.
For those of you that were at the Opening Ceremonies, we trust you
enjoyed the beautiful singing of Sue Jin Kim and Lauren Hanako Kinkade,
2001 Nisei Week Queen. As you can tell, both are accomplished
vocalists. We also hope you and your families enjoyed the Parade
of Athletes. We think the 400+ kids that were there had a great
time marching in the Parade behind their respective
organization’s placard.
We appreciate the newly crowned 2009 Nisei Week Queen, Dana Fujiko
Heatherton and her Court for taking time from their busy schedule to be
with us at the Opening Ceremonies and adding their poise, beauty and
elegance to the festivities. We were also honored to have Deputy
Chief Terry Hara join us, the highest ranking asian police officer in
the LAPD and president of the 2009 Nisei Week Foundation.
We hope you enjoyed the Taiko performances of Daion Taiko of the Orange
County Buddhist Church in Anaheim as well as the inspirational and
encouraging words of wisdom from Coach Joe Aihara, varsity boys
basketball coach at league champion Western High School in Anaheim and
the Orange League Coach of the Year. We also hope you were
dazzled and entertained by the dance moves and ball handling skills of
Dean Otsuka. And thank you for being there to show your support
for our generous sponsors. For those of you who could not make
it, we hope you will take the opportunity to join us next year.
Special thanks to the Yonsei 15 boys and girls from Japan for
participating in this year's tournament. You have made the Nikkei
Games basketball tournament an truly international event! Also,
special thanks to Richard Fukuhara and Ellen Natsume for bringing and
hanging the Tanabatas in the Pyramid and adding another dimension of
Japanese culture and tradition to these Games!
In keeping with the legacy our Nikkei Games forefathers started over 75
years ago, our goal is to create an environment for having healthy
competition and building lasting friendships. We also endeavor to
celebrate the Japanese traditions of our past and preserve them for our
future. This is our mission and our guiding light as we continue
to spread the spirit of the Nikkei Games!
Remember our motto: "The Nikkei Games: Games for the
Generations". We hope you will share this vision and help make
the Nikkei Games something our grandchildren will be able to enjoy.
The basketball tournament results should be posted very soon on the Nikkei Games website at www.nikkeigames.org.
A special thank you to those of you who volunteered to be a court
commissioner. It is one of the most challenging jobs of the
tournament and it is also one of the most important. We are
always in need of strong court commissioners because of the length of
the tournament. It is very clear the success of the tournament is
directly related to the quality of our court commissioners. If
you did not have the opportunity to be a court commissioner this year,
please take advantage of the opportunity next year.
Also, please join us in thanking our Nikkei Games sponsors,
coordinators and the more than 300 volunteers who worked to make this
event such a great success. The only way we can keep the player
fee low is through the generous support of our sponsors.
We also thank you for your understanding about the cost of parking and
how we had to pass that along to our participants this year. For
those of you that have been with us before and have paid the specatator
fee, we hope eliminating that fee was a reasonable way to help offset
the additional expense.
This year we closed all but four divisions in July. Even though
the tournament is two days now, we continue to turn away teams each
year. So next year, please get your applications in early.
The 2010 Nikkei Games basketball application should be available on our
website sometime in March 2010. The tournament is expected to be
even bigger and better next year!
Finally, if you have any comments or suggestions on improving the
Nikkei Games basketball tournament, please let us know. Your
feedback is very important to making the tournament better each year.
Again, thank you for your participation and support. We look forward to seeing you next year!
Sincerely,
Wallace Chan
2009 Nikkei Games
Basketball Chairperson