Nomiya was the first one to arrive but he narrowly managed to register his name as the last participant thanks to a series of dumb decisions before he got a really lucky break brought by a random act of kindness from a latecomer. Everyone's in it for themselves and they're actually way more menacing than Nomiya is.
Mitsuru invited one of his former teammates to train the Tigers and he's particularly interested in making Ryou the best rookie around and he's a lot stricter than he looks.