The next challenge for interisland travel? MIL’s football expansion

The Moloka‘i High School football team will play at the regulation 11-player level this fall for a full season — for the first time since the early 1960s — bringing the travel challenges for the Friendly Isle into a new spotlight.

The Farmers will play four games on Maui and three at home in their first season in Maui Interscholastic League football in the traditional game — the MIL released its schedule to the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative last month. The Farmers will play all of their games on Saturdays, beginning with their MIL opener at Lahainaluna on Aug. 31.

And, it appears that what looked like a huge travel hurdle is well on the way to being cleared, with the only passenger airline servicing the island preparing to use larger aircraft to transport the team. 

“It’s super exciting, it’s kind of right there in your face, you see who we play on what date — we’ve got the Lunas first, so that’s a big one, the toughest team in the whole MIL,” Moloka‘i head coach Mike Kahale said via phone last month of Lahainaluna, which has won an MIL-record 44 league games in a row dating to 2016. “It’s reality, it’s in front of you. … It’s all brand new.”

The challenges come from the travel requirements of transporting a varsity football team — the Farmers do not plan to field a junior varsity team this fall — to and from a different island. 

MIL varsity football teams usually include 40 or more players. Football equipment for each player — helmets, shoulder pads, uniforms and cleats — can weigh more than 10 pounds.

Currently, Mokulele Airlines is the only means of transportation to and from Moloka‘i, and the airline has faced repeated criticism over the reliability of its service, particularly for patients trying to make crucial medical appointments on other islands. The carrier uses nine-seat Cessna Grand Caravans for most of its Moloka‘i flights, but has recently added a 30-seat Saab 340B Plus aircraft for Moloka‘i flights to Oahu.

The larger plane will be used for the Farmers’ football flights — and those of the MIL teams visiting Moloka‘i — Keith Sisson, chief of staff for Mokulele Airlines, said last month.

“We’ve been running a really good operation the last couple of months, very good on-time performance, very high completion rates,” Sisson said. “What we can do with very large groups, similar to what Moloka‘i athletic department’s needs are, as long as we have a long amount of notice, as long as we are given notice well in advance, we can typically make anything happen.

“And in this particular case, within one or two days of being provided the schedule of what flights are needed, we were able to alter our future schedule to make those type of adjustments so that, yes, the Saab can go to Maui on the days that the football teams needs to move and we can back-fill the extra seats with the Caravan schedule that needs to happen.”

Veteran Moloka‘i athletic director Lee DeRouin is working with Mokulele in the effort to hammer out the travel issues.

“I’ve been taking the lead on the travel aspect, working with Mokulele Airlines with the dates of our games and they are going to work with their flight operations crew to make it work for us for these seven games — four Moloka‘i going to Maui and three games Maui going to Moloka‘i,” DeRouin said. “We currently know that all the Moloka‘i home games will be at 11 (a.m.) on a Saturday and all the Moloka‘i games will be at 7 p.m. on Saturday on Maui. So, those are great starting points to work with.”

Sisson said his airline did struggle to meet the needs of Moloka‘i in the months of March and April, due to supply-chain issues, but things have gotten much better in the last couple of months.

“It’s important to us that the community knows that the kids will be taken care of,” Sisson said. “We always prioritize movements when it comes to medical movements and also when it is anything involving the children, the keiki. We want to make sure that Moloka‘i High School is able to compete at a high level and that transportation is not a reason why they would not be able to.

“We’re ready. We’re ready.”

Moloka‘i’s away games also include Maui High at War Memorial Stadium on Sept. 7, at King Kekaulike on Sept. 21 and at Kamehameha Maui Oct. 12. Moloka‘i’s home games are Baldwin on Sept. 14, Kamehameha Maui Sept. 28 and King Kekaulike Oct. 19. 

Sisson said that he is in the process of making sure that the Maui-based teams going to Moloka‘i are covered by the airline as well.

According to Sisson, the recent efficiency numbers for the small carrier that operates throughout the Hawaiian Islands are solid after some complaints arose from Moloka‘i passengers specifically.

“All of the issues were just related to the supply-chain delinquencies that were existent across the world in the aviation space, but now that we’ve gotten the parts and the airplanes back in the air everything has been running really well,” Sisson said.

For the first half of June, Sisson said, “we are at 98 percent completion on all scheduled flights. There may be some flights where we moved passengers from one flight to another, an hour earlier or an hour later, so that’s why it’s not 100 percent.

“And our on-time percentage month to date is 85 percent, but that counts in any type of weather cancels, weather delays, that counts everything. To put that in perspective, the industry average is 78 percent. Over this past weekend we were just under 90 percent on time. So that’s spread out with 120 departures throughout the day.”

The Friendly Isle has seen several travel options leave the island the last several years, from Sea Link’s Molokai Princess ferry in 2016 to Hawaiian Airlines’ ‘Ohana by Hawaiian service in 2021. Sisson is steadfast that his airline is solid in its commitment to the island.

“It’s a very difficult market, but we take this as a huge responsibility and we’re proud of everything that we can do to make transportation easier and make things easier for the people that live there, even going to the micro-management level of working with specific passengers on specific travel needs,” Sisson said. “We do this on a daily basis.” 

Sisson said the Saab plane will be weight restricted leaving Moloka‘i due to the short length of the runway, meaning that 20 to 22 players and equipment will be able to travel from Moloka‘i to Maui. Landing on the Friendly Isle is less of a weight issue, so 28 passengers and equipment will be able to go on flights that direction.

The airline is running an advertisement in The Molokai Dispatch newspaper that customers can contact Mokulele to make arrangements if they can’t find the flight they need.

Moloka‘i played in the eight-player ranks in the MIL since that level of play began in 2010 — the Farmers leave the MIL eight-player level having won the last seven league titles.

“This is something we’ve been working towards for a long time,” Kahale said. “We felt like we’ve put our time, energy and effort into the eight-man and accomplished pretty much what we’ve wanted to.”

The Farmers played non-league 11-player games against Kamehameha Maui and Nanakuli in 2019, a controlled scrimmage at King Kekaulike in 2021, Waialua in 2022 and 2023, and Pac-5 in 2023. 

In 2023, the Farmers lost both 11-player games in close fashion — to Waialua 20-14 and 14-13 to Pac-5.

MIL football coordinator Jon Viela, the Kamehameha Maui athletic director, said that the league has not yet set a limit for the total number of players allowed to travel to and from Moloka‘i.

Kahale said that a comfortable minimum number for him would be “35, 36 guys to travel with. I’m always basing my numbers on the Mokulele (Cessna) planes, a multiple of nine. Each one is a nine-seater. So, four nine-seaters, that’s 36 and then you’d need another nine-seater for the coaches, team manager, athletic trainer, those kinds of things.”

The MIL teams traveling to Moloka‘i in the first year of the Farmers’ jump to the 11-player ranks are greeting the travel challenges with guarded optimism.

“I think it’s good that the league is expanding,” Kamehameha Maui coach Ulima Afoa said. “I’m sure that when the new (Kulanihako‘i High) School in Kihei gets involved, obviously you’ll have an even bigger league. My concern is just the travel to Moloka‘i, the logistics of it all. As far as them coming into the league, I think it’s great.”

Baldwin coach Cody Nakamura said his team welcomes the opportunity to play the first MIL 11-player game on Moloka‘i.

“Moloka‘i has been trying to get this 11-man football thing off the ground for awhile, and they have, so I think it’s very exciting for the MIL,” Nakamura said. “I’m excited for the players and the coaches over there to experience an 11-man MIL season.”

King Kekaulike coach Tyson Valle was also supportive of the new addition to the league. 

The MIL teams going to Moloka‘i will travel Friday and return to Maui after the games on Saturday. Moloka‘i will travel to Maui on Saturdays and return on Sundays.

“It’s exciting at some point, but it’s also kind of concerning because we travel with a lot of kids,” Valle said. 

Na Ali‘i will travel to Hanapēpē, Kaua‘i, to play Waimea in a preseason game on Aug. 17 and they plan to take 70 or so players.

“We’ll have to cut that by a lot to go to Moloka‘i, so I mean there’s just things that we’re trying to figure out and trying to put together right now, trying to stay ahead of it,” Valle said. “I’m sure with Baldwin going over, they will kind of be the test run.”

The MIL will be balanced in Divisions I and II for the first time ever — D-II was created in 2003. MIL D-I includes Lahainaluna, Maui High and Baldwin. MIL D-II now includes Kamehameha Maui, King Kekaulike and Moloka‘i. 

Kahale said there is no turning back now. At just more than 300 high school students, Moloka‘i is the smallest 11-player football school in the MIL.

“Ready or not, here we come. There’s a little bit of anxiety at times — did we make the right decision?” he said. “At this point, we’ve made the decision. Now we’ve got to make the decision right. … Every school is three or four times bigger than us, so it’ll be a tremendous challenge, but it’s one we’ve thought through and we’re excited to take on.”

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2024 MAUI INTERSCHOLASTIC LEAGUE VARSITY FOOTBALL SCHEDULE

(Subject to change)

Preseason

Aug. 10

Honoka‘a at King Kekaulike, 7 p.m.

Aug. 15

Kamehameha Maui vs. Beaumont (Calif.) at Radford High School, 5 p.m.

Aug. 17

King Kekaulike vs. Waimea at Hanapepe Ballpark, 6 p.m.

Aug. 23

Saint Louis at Kamehameha Maui, 6 p.m.

Valley Central (Calif.) at Lahainaluna, TBD

Aug. 24

Kaua‘i vs. Baldwin at War Memorial Stadium, TBD

Maui High at Kea‘au, TBD

Regular Season

First Round

Aug. 30

Maui High at Kamehameha Maui, 7 p.m.

Aug. 31

Moloka‘i at Lahainaluna, 7 p.m.

King Kekaulike vs. Baldwin at War Memorial Stadium, 7 p.m.

Sept. 6

Baldwin at Kamehameha Maui, 7 p.m.

Sept. 7

Moloka‘i vs. Maui High at War Memorial Stadium, 7 p.m.

Lahainaluna at King Kekaulike, 7 p.m.

Sept. 13

King Kekaulike vs. Maui High at War Memorial Stadium, 7 p.m.

Sept. 14

Kamehameha Maui at Lahainaluna, 7 p.m.

Baldwin at Moloka‘i, 11 a.m.

Sept. 20

Baldwin at Lahainaluna, 7 p.m.

Sept. 21

Moloka‘i at King Kekaulike, 7 p.m.

Sept. 27

Maui High vs. Baldwin (HC) at War Memorial Stadium, 7 p.m.

Sept. 28

Kamehameha Maui at Moloka‘i, 11 a.m.

Oct. 4

Kamehameha Maui at King Kekaulike, 7 p.m.

Oct. 5

Lahainaluna vs. Maui High (HC) at War Memorial Stadium, 7 p.m.

Second Round

Oct. 11

Lahainaluna vs. Baldwin at War Memorial Stadium, 7 p.m.

Oct. 12

Kamehameha Maui at Moloka‘i, 11 a.m.

Oct. 18

Maui High vs. Baldwin at War Memorial Stadium, 7 p.m.

Oct. 19

King Kekaulike at Moloka‘i, 11 a.m.

Oct. 25

King Kekaulike at Kamehameha Maui (HC), 7 p.m.

Oct. 26

Maui High at Lahainaluna, 7 p.m.

Nov. 1

Playoff, if necessary

Nov. 2

Playoff, if necessary