3 levels of competition could eliminate some problems in football

A high school that won a state football championship a mere four years ago suited up just 19 players last week as practice started for the upcoming season. Even some of them are said to be ineligible, and there’s talk this school might play less than half of its schedule due to its lack of available players.

The sad thing is it didn’t have to be this way for Kaiser and other Oahu public high schools that don’t have the numbers and size to match up with schools like Kahuku and Waianae.

A solution to the ongoing problem that has only gotten worse with numerous blowouts and forfeits was offered in 2016, with the proposed alliance of the Oahu Interscholastic Association and Interscholastic League of Honolulu.

If the two leagues combined, it would’ve been simple to divide into three levels of competition and avoid the mismatches that have become commonplace because elite players gravitate to a few select schools, private and public.

The public school OIA could even do this without an alliance with the private school ILH. The OIA’s 22 varsity football playing schools already are split into three groups: the roughly equal Red and Blue divisions, and Division II.

When teams win a lot in Division II they move up. The problem with this is when a Division II team does well it doesn’t always mean the school’s program is on the rise and ready to take on the big boys.

Success is often achieved with a roster full of mostly senior standouts who are no longer with the team the following year. The players who are left get a schedule that often would have been extremely challenging even for the team that won in Division II the year prior.

This is exactly why the OIA football coaches voted after last season for three distinct levels of competition within its league. As it stands, there’s no middle ground for schools like Kaiser, Nanakuli and Radford.

The Cougars were outscored 253-80 while going 1-6 in the OIA’s upper division last year. It could’ve been even worse; Radford was 0-7 and scored just 20 points compared to 350 for its OIA Blue opponents. Nanakuli was also 0-7, in the Red Division. They were moved up after Nanakuli went 7-1 and Radford 8-0 in Division II in 2015.

But the OIA athletic directors didn’t change the format (even though it did have a three-level setup for a while about 25 years ago).

It seems little has been learned from 16 years ago, when Damien of the ILH took a stand. After an 84-0 loss was the sixth blowout defeat and fifth by shutout to Saint Louis in three years, Damien president Gregory O’Donnell announced the Monarchs would not play the Crusaders in 2001.

A compromise was reached where the ILH was divided into divisions and the powerhouses would play the Division II schools just once each season instead of twice.

Since 2015, ILH Division I and Division II teams have not played each other in league games.

This has led to a scheduling problem for the seven-team ILH, and Saint Louis, Kamehameha and Punahou considering booking more games against mainland teams. There’s even talk of a league comprised of the ILH powerhouses and schools from other states.

This is also symptomatic of the lack of balance in Hawaii high school football, another problem that could largely be solved by an ILH-OIA alliance.

As it was in the case with Damien in 2001, it’s easy to empathize with the frustrated Kaiser players and parents, who met Friday night to discuss the situation. There’s a lot of hard work and sacrifice that goes into preparing for a football season.

But the coaches and athletic administration are in a tough spot, and must come down on the side of what is safe for the student-athletes.

The sooner the OIA gets to three levels of competition for football the fewer problems it will have of this nature.