Football
OIA opts out of Open Division state football tournament




WAIKOLOA, Hawaii — The Oahu Interscholastic Association will not declare any of its football teams for the Open Division for the 2017 state tournament.

OIA executive director Raymond Fujino made the announcement to ScoringLive minutes after the conclusion of Friday morning's Hawaii High School Athletic Association Executive Board meeting at the Hilton Waikoloa Village.

"We're not going to declare in the Open. All of our teams will be in Division I or Division II," Fujino said.

Earlier in the morning, the board approved a recommendation from the Hawaii Interscholastic Athletic Directors Association annual conference, which wrapped up Thursday, to continue the three-tier state football tournament format for the upcoming school year. The Interscholastic League of Honolulu, Big Island Interscholastic Federation, Maui Interscholastic League and Kauai Interscholastic Federation presidents voted in favor of the measure, while the OIA was the lone league that stood opposed.

Schools have until the HHSAA declaration date of Sept. 1 to decide which division will participate in for all sports, including football. However, Fujino said in the case of the OIA, he does not expect anything to change between now and then.

"Speaking for the OIA, no. That's a solid decision made by the members," Fujino said.

ILH executive director Blane Gaison said he remains hopeful the Open Division tournament will go on this season.

"There possibly could be one (without the OIA). I know the MIL and the BIIF are talking about it. They asked what are we (ILH) going to do and so they're going to be calling and having discussions and seeing what can happen, "Gaison said. "This is just something that is fresh, it just came out, so with that we've got to go ahead and address it with our membership and see what options we do have. I think the worse case scenario is we go back to Division I and Division II."

Gaison added that he doesn't believe this to be the end of the three-tier format, which made its debut last season.

"I think last year it was really nice to have a three-tier program. I think everybody believes that it worked really well," Gaison said. "I know the OIA has their own issues that they've got to deal with, so now we've got to go back and figure out what we need to do in our ILH, because we basically kind of made our declarations already, but that's the beauty and the nature of the HHSAA with the tournaments, you know, you make your declarations and for their (OIA) specific reasons they're choosing not to declare for the Open and so we're just going to have to sit down with our people now and reassess how we move forward with it. I hope that we can bring it back to the table next year. It seems that in our discussions with (Fujino) that that is something that they will want to continue to discover and continue to keep on the table and maybe come back to that next year, so we're going to continue to have our talks, keep our fingers crossed and keep moving forward with it."

The board made a slight amendment to the HIADA recommendation by allowing the HHSAA's football committee to make amendments as it sees fit. If any changes are made by the committee before the start of the season, it does not have to be approved by the HHSAA executive board, but if changes are sought after the start date, it will require board approval.

The board, which is made up of the presidents from the state's five leagues, approved 13 other HIADA recommendations as is — 10 of them unanimously. Each league president carries a weighted vote. The OIA — the largest league — had 29 1/4 votes, the BIIF 23 1/4, the ILH 23, the MIL 14 1/4 and the KIF 5 1/4.

Also of note, the board passed a recommendation that forces leagues championships to be completed at least four days prior to the Monday start of those state tournaments that utilize a regional format.

HHSAA eligibility rules were also modified after a measure to increase the number of organized practice days from five to seven to consider a student-athlete a participant in a sport for that particular season passed.

Among the other recommendations that gained approval were two that will recognize the seventh- and eighth-place finishers in finals of the swimming and diving and track and field state championship meets as medalists. Previously only the top six finishers earned medals.

Also, the cap of 27 points in all consolation matches of the boys' and girls' volleyball state tournaments was eliminated.

The lone HIADA recommendation that did not pass — which sought to separate the boys' and girls' bowling state tournaments into separate two-day tournaments as a one-year pilot program — was withdrawn by the ILH, which introduced the proposal earlier in the week.



Reach Kalani Takase at [email protected].




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