Chris Chun expects a fairly quiet voting season.

When administrators gather for this weekend’s annual Hawaii Interscholastic Athletic Directors Association conference at the Ala Moana Hotel, there may be nary a word about the usual fan concerns. For several years, there has been at least one proposal on the table about expanding the Division I state football tournament from six teams to eight.

This year? Chun, executive director of the Hawaii High School Athletic Association, hasn’t heard of one. Yet.

Last year, there were no football proposals expected at HIADA, but come "game day," there it was. And the private-school Interscholastic League of Honolulu, which stood to gain the most — a possible at-large berth for its runner-up — again sided with the public-school Oahu Interscholastic Association. The vote totals of those two Oahu-based leagues easily outnumbered the vote totals of the neighbor-island leagues.

Chun said he sees room for hope on a proposal from the HHSAA. He’d like to see 12-team state tournaments, such as the basketball championships, take a more regional format by going to pods, or quadrants, for the first two days. He envisions regionals on the Big Island, Maui and Oahu, each hosted by the champion of respective leagues in D-I. The host team (champion) would still have a first-round bye.

There’s reason for optimism. Basketball has always been a good draw on the Big Island, and the Afook-Chinen Hilo Civic Auditorium is often at capacity (4,000) for league championship games. A sellout or anything close would easily trump the usual first- and second-day crowds on Oahu.

"The benefit is financial. It would also help the MIL and BIIF," Chun said.

As an example, a matchup between the BIIF champion and an ILH runner-up, say Hilo and Kamehameha, "would draw really well," Chun noted.

The final two rounds, the semifinals and final, would be played on Oahu. A byproduct might be the elimination of consolation-round games. That’s not necessarily a negative because fewer days on the road would also mean a cut in expenses for those teams. All in all, he said, it might be a pilot program worth testing.

"I like the chances," Chun said of the proposal’s potential passage this weekend. "It would be a drastic change, but I’d like us to have a discussion, maybe try it for one tournament."

The general complaint whenever state-tourney play shifts some to the neighbor islands is from Oahu schools that prefer not to travel. In the current 12-team field, six OIA schools normally qualify for the tourney.

"We’ll make it so only three (OIA teams) would travel," Chun said. "Then we’d have a ‘final four’ on Oahu. It would be a real state tournament."

Any proposal that passes HIADA’s committee votes and the general assembly on Sunday would then move to the HHSAA executive board, which has not always been a rubber-stamp approval process.

As for adding a shot clock to boys and girls basketball, Chun said there is no proposal. Talk about making that move resurfaced after ‘Iolani and Maryknoll played a stall-ball type of game during the ILH boys regular season. Maryknoll won 15-12.