Members of the HIADA voting body gathered for the final general assembly on the final day of the 55th annual Hawaii Interscholastic Athletic Directors Association held at the Hilton Waikoloa Village. Brien Ing | SL

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WAIKOLOA, Hawaii — For the first time in its nearly 40-year history, it appears as though the softball state tournament will move away from its traditional scheduling to a regional format.

On the final day of the 55th annual Hawaii Interscholastic Athletic Directors Association Conference at the Hilton Waikoloa Village Wednesday morning, ADs passed the proposal — which was introduced by the Interscholastic League of Honolulu — with 58 votes in favor of the measure and 31 opposed.

The ILH gained the support of most neighbor island ADs, but the Oahu Interscholastic Association — and a single ILH administrator — voted against the change.

St. Andrew's Priory athletic director and ILH softball coordinator Missy Kilbey spoke to the HIADA voting body during the general assembly, just prior to the vote.

"I truly believe the regional format is good for volleyball, soccer, basketball and can be good for softball, as well," Kilbey said. "This puts our students first so they're not missing as much school."

After the conclusion of the general assembly, Kilbey reiterated her stance to ScoringLive.

"My feeling is that I'm glad the regional format is able to go to softball, as well as some of the other tournaments (in the past), and hopefully in the future we can get other tournaments involved as well," Kilbey said. "Our athletes are students before they're athletes. Before a state tournament, they're students first. Anything we can do to benefit our student-athletes is a positive."

The proposal was voted down in a straw poll in committee Monday afternoon and again by the same group Tuesday (13 for, 17 against with five abstentions), but reached the general assembly floor Wednesday through a minority report submitted by the ILH.

The parameters of the HIADA-approved measure — such as format, host sites/leagues and whether it would be applied to the Division I and/or Division II tournaments — were undefined and will be left up to the Hawaii High School Athletic Association to determine.

"As far as logistics, those things can be taken care of by the HHSAA office," Kilbey told the voting body.

As it stands, both tournaments are held over four consecutive days on the same island, although the 2016 D2 state tournament is currently slated to be held on Maui. The D1 tournament has been exclusively on Oahu since 1987. It was held on Kauai twice — in 1978 and 1985 — and once each on Maui (1981) and the Big Island (1986).

The HIADA recommendation still needs the approval of the HHSAA executive board, which is made up of the five league presidents. It will meet Thursday morning in Waikoloa and can approve, deny or amend any of the 19 recommendations that came out of the HIADA conference.

The lack of specifics is an area of concern for Waialua athletic director and HHSAA state softball co-coordinator Bryce Kaneshiro.

"We will leave here not knowing what will be the details and we'll find out later," Kaneshiro said to his fellow ADs. "We're expecting the HHSAA office to make all the decisions (and) if they make the decisions, then we have no reason to grumble when they make the schedule and that's the problem I have as softball coordinator on this. We don't have something set like the (past) two years."

Kaneshiro expressed some frustration — and acceptance — to ScoringLive after the vote.

"I understand their love for the regional format, but again it's the ambiguity and that it wasn't clear that makes me disappointed, but from now, if it's approved by the executive board we'll go on from there and we'll just see from there," Kaneshiro said. "That's what HIADA is about. We just move on after decisions are made, after the executive board makes a decision, and we'll just go from there."

Kohala athletic director and Big Island Interscholastic Federation coordinator Laurie Koustik was among those who voted in favor of the measure.

"I think for us, as a league, it's nice anytime we can get a regional here, because we always have to travel to Honolulu, so to have something, like even a regional, then we have an opportunity to host and that helps our community, it helps the softball community, it helps the parents to be able to see their kids play, otherwise they might not have that chance to do that in Honolulu, so it's definitely an advantage for us," Koustik said.

Based on the previous regional formats used in the boys' and girls' soccer, girls' basketball and boys' volleyball state tournaments, the softball tournament would likely be held over two consecutive weeks.

However, Kaneshiro said the possibility of keeping first-round games featuring two teams from Oahu on their home island still exists, which would conceivably save money for the HHSAA.

"Because it's ambiguous, I guess it depends on the HHSAA and what they determine as being the best fit," Kaneshiro said. "We have two different (regional) schedules that we've used in the past — two years ago and last year — both are different, both have their pros and cons and I guess if we're going off of that, I mean, there's just all kinds of possibilities. Can they play Oahu versus Oahu — the OIA and ILH teams — on Oahu? Yeah. Can they play on a neighbor island? They probably could, too, so it all depends on which schedule is being brought up."

Other notable proposals that were approved Wednesday included one which will reduce the number of weight classes in wrestling from 14 to 12 for both genders and another to inform all coaches of the oiling patterns of lanes two weeks prior to the state bowling tournament.

One of the more tightly-contested votes came on a measure to make all four seeded teams the designated home team in the quarterfinal round of both the baseball and softball state tournaments, but both were approved.

Also, ADs opted to ban the double-knee seoinage (shoulder throw) from boys' and girls' judo by a vote of 43 to 9 (there were 36 abstentions, mostly coming from the OIA). The original proposal — which was defeated in committee, 11 to 22 — sought to outright ban the technique, but was amended to make the first offense a technical hansokumake (disqualification), which results in a forfeiture of the match but allows the judoka to continue in the state tournament, and the second offense a flagrant hansokumake, which disqualifies the individual from the rest of the tournament.

The lone measure that reached the general assembly floor that was defeated (34 to 51 with three abstentions) was an OIA-introduced proposal to move up the start date for football by one week and would have consequently set a mandatory minimum of nine days in full pads before players are allowed to take part in any scrimmages or games.