Yūmi Kawamata

Yūmi Kawamata (born 23 July 1989 in Hokkaido) is a Japanese woman sepak takraw player who plays as an attacker for the All Japan national team. She trained in classical ballet and piano as a child and first met the sport in her third year at Sapporo Seishin Girls' Junior High School, which had exchanges with Thailand, where she was taken with the overhead kick. She started at a Sapporo club, made her first national tournament appearance in her second year of high school, and after moving to Tokyo spent six years in the Nippon Sport Science University sepak takraw club while studying at Sophia, graduating from the Faculty of Theology in 2015. She placed third at the All Japan Championship in her first university year and second in her second, and the flexibility she built through ballet helped her into the national team in 2010.