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With great expectations, Tatsuya Ueta's squad took up the challenge at the World Cup 2007, the first qualifier for the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

Unfortunately their results did not meet anyone's expectations -- Japan finished ninth, with three wins and eight losses out of 11 matches.
 
Nevertheless, Ueta and those involved in the Men's National Team were strongly convinced that despite the unsatisfactory result at the World Cup 2007 the players' morale had been boosted and fundamental skills with combined offence had remarkably improved compared to those of several years ago.

Furthermore, the young players, i.e. Yusuke Ishijima, Yu Koshikawa and Kunihiro Shimizu, had gained invaluable experience and confidence during the tournament. Experience is provided by 37-year-old team captain Masashi Ogino, who competed in the Barcelona Games in 1992. After that, though, he spent years away from the National Team because of injury.
 
Ueta's squad was launched immediately after the huge disappointment of the Athens Olympic Qualification Tournament in 2004 -- Japan has not qualified for the Olympics for successive tournaments.

Japan finished eighth at the 2006 World Championship and were satisfied with this result. The goal of Ueta's squad in 2007 was, of course, to secure a berth for the Beijing Olympics in 2008 at the World Cup.

Ueta picked the best players for his squad for the World Cup as well as the World League. The training worked out well and Japan beat two European powerhouses, Italy and France, in the preliminary round.
 
But at the Asian Men's Championship in September in Jakarta, Japan's squad, as the defending champion, threw away the lead and finished runners-up.
  
After this and the World Cup disappointment and having no time to dwell on failure, Ueta's Japan embarked on their next goal -- to secure a berth at the Beijing Olympics at the Olympic Qualification Tournaments in May in Tokyo.

This time they were successful, finishing second behind Italy with a 6-1 win-loss record to advance as the best Asian team in the competition.

In 2004, immediately after the Japanese Men's National Team failed to qualify for the Olympics in Athens, the Japan Volleyball Association appointed as Head Coach Tatsuya Ueta, then coach of Japan's Junior Men's National Team.

Since then, Ueta, who is considered a hardworking and progressive coach, has not only been coaching his squad very hard, but also collecting and studying lots of information from abroad. Consequently, he has built up his present Volleyball philosophy and the success of the national team so far has been entirely due to his efforts.

Tatsuya Ueta was born in Shikoku, the smallest of Japan's four main islands. He started playing Volleyball at the age of 12 and developed into an astute middle blocker. He played Volleyball for high school and university teams and gained a reputation as a good player even in his school days. He joined Nippon Steel Blazers in 1987 and played for the National Team from 1989 to 1993.

He was assistant coach of Nippon Steel Blazers from 1995 to 1998, and Head Coach of Nippon Steel's successor, Sakai Blazers, from 1999 to March 2001 before joining the Japan Volleyball Association as coach of the junior men's national team.

His goal was to compete in the Olympics in Beijing and this aspiration was the motivation for his squad. In order to achieve this goal, he worked to improve his squad.

Although Japan's squad ended up ninth at the FIVB World Cup in 2007 -- this result disappointed everyone -- the JVA decided to let Ueta lead the National Team and pinned their hopes on Ueta guiding his players to Beijing.

Ueta has been discovering weaknesses in the team throughout all of the recent competitions and studying how to correct them and how to improve his team. He believed that Japan would have no chance to go to Beijing without solving those problems. He was rewarded when Japan claimed the Asian Beijing berth at the Olympic qualifier in Tokyo, Japan, in June, the first time they had qualified for the Olympics in 16 years.