OIA will stick to playing football on weekends

Oahu Interscholastic Association football games will be played only on Fridays and Saturdays this fall, thanks to an agreement made Thursday between the Oahu Football Officials Association and the OIA.

The move solves a problem that cropped up in May, when the OIA announced it would spread the weekly schedule of games over four days — Wednesdays through Saturdays.

“I talked to the head cheese, (OFOA president) Cal Evans, and he told me that after discussion with (OIA executive director) Ray Fujino, the OIA is going to go back to games on Fridays and Saturdays,” said Jim Beavers, who spent 17 years as the head of officials and is now the OFOA’s recruiting chairman. “This is great news, particularly for the kids and the parents.”

Brandis Mirafuentes, who is on the OFOA board, confirmed the agreement Thursday, but Evans, Fujino and OIA football coordinator Harold Tanaka were not available for comment.

According to Beavers, Tanaka will work on amending the OIA schedule.

The OIA’s decision in May to add Wednesday and Thursday games was done to address a shortage of officials, but it was a major point of concern to many in the football community who felt that student-athletes shouldn’t be asked to attend school on a midweek day, play a contact sport that night, get home late, wake up early the next day and be expected to do schoolwork and homework and possibly attend practice without enough rest.

“The OIA was trying to help us, they really were,” Beavers said, referring to the officials.

Beavers said some officials will be doing both junior varsity and varsity games in one night, something the OIA was trying to avoid by spreading out the games throughout the week. But he added that that won’t happen as much as initially anticipated.

According to Beavers and Matt Sumstine, who assigns officials to the high school state tournament, there will be a small increase of high school football officials (as many as six) this year.

A larger increase of OFOA manpower over the next few years is expected, according to Sumstine, who said there will be between 70 and 85 officials in the rotation this year.

“In the last 18 months, we’ve added about a dozen to 15 new officials to high school football,” Sumstine said. “But we’ve probably lost about eight to 10 people who have relocated. And we have 33 new people signed up for the fall of 2017 who will train at the Jr. Prep Sports (seventh and eighth grade) level. It takes time to train, usually at least two years before they’re qualified for varsity. The numbers will be up next year, and then the following year will be noticeably better.”