Brien Ing | SL

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HHSAA executive director Chris Chun addresses attendees on the opening day of the 56th annual Hawaii Interscholastic Athletic Directors Association conference held at the Hilton Waikoloa Village. Brien Ing | SL

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WAIKOLOA, Hawaii — The 56th Annual Hawaii Interscholastic Athletic Directors Association Conference got underway Tuesday at the Hilton Waikoloa Village on the Kohala Coast of the Big Island.

During the three-day conference athletic directors from the nearly 100 statewide member schools of the Hawaii High School Athletic Association will discuss and if necessary, vote on and forward their recommendations to the HHSAA executive board, which meets Friday morning.

More than 50 concerns/proposals were submitted to HIADA. Athletic directors split up into four breakout groups Tuesday and conducted straw polls before going into league caucuses in the afternoon.

Of the notable measures on the table is a proposal submitted by the Maui Interscholastic League seeking to expand both the Division I and II state football tournaments from six to eight teams. The media was not allowed in the closed-door group sessions, but ADs in group four — which was assigned the proposal along with nine others — voted to formulate a committee to look into the possibility of expansion.

No vote on the actual measure is expected this week. It is the only proposal pertaining to football currently on the table.

Group four also voted down an HHSAA-submitted proposal to utilize a two-week format for the D1 state softball tournament that would see regional sites on Maui and the Big Island in the first week of the 12-team tournament.

The MIL also sought to be put back into the rotation to host the D1 and D2 boys and girls soccer state tournaments, but that was voted down by a wide margin in group three Tuesday. The same group also shot down a measure to return the format of the state track and field championships to hold the trials on a Thursday and the finals two days later. As it stands, the trials take place Friday and the finals Saturday.

The same groups will reconvene Wednesday afternoon for another round of voting. Any measures that pass there will move forward to Thursday's final general assembly where it will be voted on by the entire HIADA body. However, the HHSAA executive board can approve, deny or amend any of the HIADA recommendations Friday.

Ann Meyers Drysdale, a trailblazer in women's basketball, served as the keynote speaker at Tuesday night's HIADA Awards Dinner. Drysdale was a standout player at UCLA and was a member of the U.S. Women's Basketball team that claimed a silver medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. She became the first woman to sign an NBA contract in 1980 with the Indiana Pacers and was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999.