This year, the Lady Spartans of girls’ basketball welcomed a new player, Kikyo Lovin (11), from another continent. Kikyo Lovin is from Akita, Japan and just started her new school year in a new country. However, one thing still remains the same in her life: playing basketball.
Kikyo Lovin started her basketball journey when she was in 3rd grade. At the time, she was enrolled in a local public elementary school in Akita and played there until her 10th grade. In Japan, basketball is a year-round sport with few breaks whereas in the States, it’s only a winter sport for high school athletes.
“There’s a lot of things that we didn’t do [because] we wanted our kids to play basketball [instead],” Jonathan Lovin, Kikyo’s father, said.
Akita, the city where the Lovins lived, is one of the coldest in Japan. The cold months can continue until March, with January being the coldest as the temperature goes down to 28 degrees Fahrenheit. However, these temperatures did not stop Kikyo Lovin from practicing the year-round sport.
“There’s a big difference between practicing inside in Japan and in America,” Jonathan Lovin said. “You go into a gym in America and it’s warm. You go into a gym in Japan and it’s not. They do not run heaters. They have a space heater by where the kids are playing and that’s it. Sometimes it felt colder inside than outside. It was generally freezing and approximately 30 degrees.”
The family’s decision to move to America revolved around Kikyo Lovin’s desire to learn more English and her father’s will to earn his master’s degree while working as a soccer coach. Back in Japan, Jonathan Lovin was a high school English teacher for an all girls Catholic school in Akita.
“I lived there for 19 years,” Jonathan Lovin said. “[As an English teacher,] I took my [students] to the regional and the national speech contest and debate contests.”
Much of Kikyo Lovin’s knowledge and skills about basketball were taught by her Japanese coach Koji Hiratsuka. He was her coach throughout junior high and through her first two years of high school in Akita, Japan.
“[Kikyo’s Japanese team was] a very strong team because the coach was good, very strict and well-known,” Jonathan Lovin said. “He knew everybody and now he’s like one of the leaders of the whole district’s basketball.”
From breaking her nose at the age of 12 during a game to spraining her ankle, Kikyo Lovin faced all kinds of injuries during her basketball journey. However, these challenges never stopped her from quitting the sport.
“I think basketball has been a blessing and a curse for her,” Jonathan Lovin said. “She had reconstructive surgery on her knee and ankle.”
One of the biggest differences in the basketball gameplay that Kikyo Lovin has had to adjust to is that in Japan, there is a shot clock that lasts 24 seconds and after a rebound, the clock resets to 14 seconds. This timing is the norm for every country, but some states in the United States, including Tennessee, do not apply this rule to high school basketball games.
“Tennessee’s lack of shot clock is actually one of the reasons I think that the scores in Memphis, they don’t go up very much because the kids hold the balls [for a longer time],” Jonathan Lovin said. “I’ve never seen kids holding balls for a minute, two minutes and not until I came here.”
In October of 2024, Japanese basketball player Yuki Kawamura signed a two-way contract with the Memphis Hustle of the NBA G League and is now a player for the Memphis Grizzlies. Kawamura played at the 2023 World Cup and the 2024 Paris Olympics for his national Japanese team. Though he is the shortest NBA player at 5’’8, he continues to win over Memphians’ hearts, including Kikyo Lovin’s.
“It’s so cool that he plays in the NBA,” Kikyo Lovin said. “I want to meet him.”
Kikyo Lovin’s teammates in America have made her feel more welcome since day one. Since that time, Kikyo Lovin has continued to impress the coaches here.
“[The rest of the players] teach her a bunch of slang,” Memri Nelson (11), manager for the girls’ basketball team, said. “[The team’s] coach says that she has good handles [and that] she can shoot.”
Being away from her younger sister and mother, Kikyo Lovin finds herself calling them almost every day despite the 14-hour time zone difference. She hasn’t seen them since last July.
“I miss [them] and FaceTime [them] every morning,” Kikyo Lovin said. “[I am] going to see [them] during the summer.”
Kikyo Lovin wants to play basketball at a college level, and her father wishes that basketball will still be part of her life in the future. According to her teammates, Kikyo Lovin has a real passion for teaching basketball to other kids.
“I hope she uses it to become like a sports trainer or a coach or to be involved in other young people’s lives so that she can continue to be in basketball,” Jonathan Lovin said.
The Lovins expressed their deep gratitude to the faculty members of White Station High as they made both of them feel welcomed and included. This courtesy made the transition easier for them.
“I think that especially the sports community here in the school has done an amazing job of welcoming both her and I [and] making us feel like we’re part of the family, part of the team,” Jonathan Lovin said. “Her teammates, her coaches, like Coach KG, Coach Q, and Coach Rye, all of those guys have just lifted me up and Coach Warren has really lifted up the situation with Kikyo and just made us feel comfortable and happy here, so I just wanna say thank you.”