No Change in State Prep Tournaments

By Fred Guzman

The logic applied to some of the decisions made by the state’s high school sports administrators sometimes goes beyond puzzling.

For example, Hawaii remains the only state in the nation that does not apply enrollment as the key factor in classifying teams for state tournaments.

As a result, schools with more than 2,000 students are allowed to compete in Division-II state tournaments against schools with enrollments of 500 or less.

Then, yesterday, the Hawaii High School Athletic Association executive committee shot down a proposal to allow all teams to play a minimum of three games in team sports.

The primary reason cited for the rejection was expense.  But, ironically, teams are invariably required to reserve hotel rooms and ground transportation for the duration of the tournament and, as well all know, changing tickets are now a costly exercise.

So teams can be knocked out of a state event within 24 hours and then have to sit around for another two or three days.

The executive board also rejected a proposal to allowed all D-II team tournaments to rotate to the neighbor islands.

But the two Oahu-based leagues blocked the bid citing expense, ignoring the fact that it costs just as much money to travel to Oahu for Neighbor Island schools as it does to travel from Oahu to Maui, Kauai and the Big Island.