For a long time in the history of Japanese high school baseball, teams from the Tohoku region had the ability to compete at the highest level—but not the results to match it.
Even powerhouse teams like Tohoku High School, led by Yu Darvish, reached the final only to fall short. The phrase “the championship flag crossing Shirakawa Barrier” symbolized a long-held dream that no Tohoku team had yet fulfilled.

That dream would not be realized until Sendai Ikuei High School won the national championship in 2022.

Before that moment, Hanamaki Higashi High School came close. With Yusei Kikuchi as its ace, the school finished runner-up at the Spring Invitational, but the championship still slipped away.
For Shohei Ohtani, who followed in that lineage, the desire to win carried even more weight.

In the summer of 2011, Ohtani appeared at Koshien as a second-year student. That year came just months after the Great East Japan Earthquake, and some of his teammates were directly affected by the disaster.
For Ohtani, baseball was no longer only about winning—it was also about representing his home.

However, an injury shortly before the tournament limited his ability to pitch. Even so, he expressed his determination clearly:

“I want to show how strong Iwate Prefecture really is at Koshien. I’m not at full strength yet, but I still want to pitch there.”

At the tournament, Ohtani was unable to perform at his usual level, and Hanamaki Higashi was eliminated in the first round.

The following year, despite recording 160 km/h pitches during the prefectural tournament, Ohtani’s team again fell short in the final. After the loss, he spoke with visible emotion:

“I wanted to win the national championship and make the people of Iwate happy. Not being able to do that is deeply frustrating.”

That inability to “finish the job” in high school became part of Ohtani’s foundation.
The disappointment did not break him—it sharpened his resolve, fueling the growth that would later carry him far beyond Koshien.

Source

This quote comes from a Japanese book published in Japan and is not currently available in English.

Shohei Ohtani: Challenge, p.25