First Battle

After the opening ceremony ended, all the participating teams gradually left the gymnasium.

According to the schedule, the competition would officially begin tomorrow, so today was every team's final chance to rest and recuperate.

But tomorrow, the truly brutal elimination rounds would officially begin.

From the first round to the final, every day and every game would be a winner-takes-all battle for survival.

No matter how dominant your team had been in your own prefecture, once you reached the Winter Cup stage, every team stood on the same starting line. They would all fight with everything they had for the same goal: the one and only championship trophy!

Once the opening ceremony was over, the coaches and players of every team did not linger. They quickly returned to their respective bases and began actively preparing for the tournament.

The next day, according to the schedule, the first-round games would be held today.

Aside from the seeded teams that had received byes, along with the teams fortunate enough to draw byes, a total of thirty-six teams from prefectures all over Japan would compete in sixteen intense matchups today.

Once all of today's games were over, only thirty-two of the fifty teams would remain.

In other words, a full eighteen teams would be eliminated in just one day!

They had all once been kings of their respective prefectures. They had fought their way through the Winter Cup prefectural qualifiers before finally making it to Tokyo.

Yet cruelly, after playing only one game today, their Winter Cup journey would come to an end.

As for the third-years on those teams, they would truly lose any chance of catching the eye of coaches from prestigious university teams.

After all, no prestigious university coach would pay attention to first-round games.

The remaining thirty-two teams