Sitting on the couch in Sedona, about 5,500 miles from his home prefecture of Miyagi, Japan, Sedona Red Rock High School senior Shota Yabuuchi fell in love with distance running.

His family watched on despite the 16-hour time difference as his cousin competed in an ekiden — a long-distance relay race in which a team of runners compete in legs spanning anywhere from 5-10 kilometers. Its Japanese following is fanatic. Yabuuchi felt the “hype” all the way from the states.

He was just a high-school freshman at the time. Basketball was his primary love but he’d just joined the Scorpions’ cross-country squad for conditioning purposes. In Yabuuchi’s native country, there aren’t “seasons” for sports. You pick one and play it year-round. When his family moved to Sedona when he was 10, he took advantage of the fact that it’s possible to focus on multiple sports at once.

He started running track and cross country simply to help him perform better in other sporting endeavors. By the time he was a senior, he was a state champion. Now, after finishing second in the state in cross country and third in the 1600-meter run, Shota Yabuuchi is the Sedona Red Rock News SRRHS Male Athlete of the Year.

“At the starting line we’re all the same. We’re all equal.”

Shota Yabuuchi

The 2022 Arizona Interscholastic Association State Track Championships “didn’t get off to the best start,” Yabuuchi says. The 4x800m relay wasn’t his best performance and Scorpions didn’t qualify for finals.

In the 3200m, Yabuuchi came into the race with a target on his back. He was the Division IV state champion as a junior. As a senior, he took sixth. The result clearly wasn’t what he wanted. Yabuuchi admits he was intimated by other racers in the finals, and his strategy was to conserve energy for the final quarter of the race.

“I should have used more energy for the middle of the race … That was the biggest mistake,” he said. “After that happened and I got sixth, I just kept telling myself that I could race with them.”

With four days separating that 3200m and the 1600m, Yabuuchi used the time to get his mind right for the last meet of his high school career. As a self-confessed addict of checking other runners’ times, comparing himself to others was useless at this point. Yabuuchi was a state champion himself. He’d earned his place in the state meet.

“At the starting line we’re all the same. We’re all equal,” he said. “I can’t be afraid of them.”

Yabuuchi finished third in the 1600m and smashed his personal-record in the time by five seconds. His 4:25 performance in an event he doesn’t consider to be his best is all you need to know about Shota Yabuuchi. He thrives off the heels of his lowest points.

He’s all about “mindset.” It’s a term that comes up often in conversations with the now-graduate. He agrees with the old cliche — distance running is just as much mental as it is physical. Yabuuchi credits his frame of mind to the life-altering move he experienced
at 10 years old.

A long way from home

“My mom is a very unique person,” he laughed.

Yabuuchi’s grandmother lived in Henderson, Nevada and convinced her family to join her in the states. Seeking a “spiritual” destination, Yabuuchi’s mother decided on Sedona on a recommendation from his grandmother.

The transition was rough, as one could expect. Yabuuchi didn’t speak a word of English when he boarded the plane to Arizona.

“The language barrier has always been a part of my life,” he said. “Doing sports kind of forced me to talk to people and socialize. I think it really helped me improve my English. If I wasn’t in a position to force me to use English, or force me to communicate to others, I wouldn’t improve my English.”

Yabuuchi was an introvert in his native Japan. He says he didn’t speak to others much unless he was forced to. When his family packed up and moved across the Pacific, he had to change that. His proficiency in English now is credited to his experience in sports at Sedona Red Rock High School.

“You should have listened to me talk as a freshman,” Yabuuchi joked.

Yabuuchi’s story is one about circumstance. He played baseball in Japan. Had his family decided to stay in their native country, he would likely stay on the diamond rather than the track. He joined the cross country team in Sedona on a whim, wanting to improve his conditioning for basketball.

Now, he’ll attend Metropolitan State University of Denver in the fall, where he’ll compete as a NCAA Division II athlete on partial scholarship.

He knows about being in the right place at the right time, and that’s certainly part of his story. But more than that, Yabuuchi is a young man that takes advantage of opportunities.

He could have secluded himself as a child in a new, scary place where few people looked like him and even fewer spoke his native tongue. He could have stuck with one sport in high school, because that’s how it was back home and that’s what was comfortable. He could have phoned it in at his cross country practices and socialized rather than pushing himself. He could have given up after a disappointing finish in his best event as a senior.

Instead, Yabuuchi became comfortable being uncomfortable. He ran advanced workouts knowing his teammates wouldn’t keep up. He forced himself to make friends knowing he can’t speak quite as eloquently as they could. He chose to move out of state to the big city for college, knowing he’d have to learn to swim in a bigger lake than Sedona. These qualities pushed Yabuuchi into becoming the athlete he is today.

“I’m really glad, after spending eight years of my life in Sedona, that my mom picked this place,” he said. “Now I’m ready to spread my wings.”