Christopher Chun

Christopher Chun’s job as executive director of the Hawaii High School Athletic Association keeps him immersed in sports all year round, one of the many things he loves about his job at the nonprofit organization, which helps nearly 100 public and private schools engage student-athletes in healthy competition and ensures that they have the opportunity to compete in state-level tournaments in a diverse array of sports.

Chun’s experience as a lawyer helps him craft the policies that high schools look to the HHSAA to provide, such as the statewide eligibility rule that governs when transfer students can play in the competitions that crown the state champs. The HHSAA also provides a variety of training programs and workshops for coaches and athletes to meet the needs of its five participating leagues throughout the islands.

"Our top priority has always been participation. We want students to have the opportunity to play sports at school and to be able to compete at the state level. Athletics is an important part of the overall educational experience and we want to help high schools provide that for their students," said Chun, who played football and baseball himself as a youth, until an injury sidelined him his junior year of high school.

The 1992 ‘Iolani School alumnus took the helm of the HHSAA in 2010, after serving as general counsel for the Oahu Interscholastic Association for five years and as a civil attorney in Honolulu for seven years before that. His bachelor’s degree and law degree are from the University of Hawaii-Manoa, and in between he earned a master’s from Chaminade University.

Chun and his wife, Jamie, a court clerk, have two young children; he makes the time to help coach his son’s baseball team.

"It’s always great to be with the kids, especially when they are doing what they love."

QUESTION: What is your favorite part of your job?

ANSWER: My job centers around sports. It’s exciting and interesting, with different outcomes every year. I found this is true even on the administration side. I get to touch so many people’s lives in a positive way. …

Q: What are the biggest challenges for your association … ?

A: We are composed of five leagues with basically five different personalities and/or needs. Getting them to find common ground can be difficult at times. Our state faces transportation issues that many others do not, especially since we are surrounded by water. This contributes to probably the biggest challenge: funding. We are not a state agency. We receive no state funding. All of our funding is basically from sponsors and tournament income.

Q: What are the top priorities for the HHSAA at the moment?

A: Our organization runs all the state tournaments. We also coordinate the eligibility rules. We coordinate the leagues all getting along and running smoothing. Our top priority has always been participation. We want to get as many athletes participating in high-school sports as possible, culminating in a state tournament. Another big priority is safety. So that’s why we’ve been doing concussion-awareness classes.

We do coaches’ certification. As of right now, we might be the only state that has trainers at all of our state-tournament events. We make sure we have ambulances at every state football game, and as many as we can at the other state tournaments as well.

Q: So how is participation?

A: Hawaii offers among the most state tournaments in the nation; we’re either second or third in terms of that. Because we obviously have a lot of sports that we can play year-round. In terms of the number of students, participation has been steadily growing.

Q: One of the things I’ve been reading a lot about, and I guess is sort of a perennial issue, is this idea of merging the OIA and the Interscholastic League of Honolulu. Do you have an opinion about that?

A: You might have been hearing a lot about it, but this is the first year actually that I’ve been hearing about it. And the merging of the OIA and the ILH would be something that would have to be decided at the league level. We can’t tell the leagues who they play in that respect. What we do to be fair for every league — the way they come to the state tournament — is that the amount of teams in the league is proportional to the amount of berths they get in the tournament. So every student-athlete regardless of what league he’s in has the same chance to make it to a state tournament. …

Q: So this isn’t your decision?

A: Right. So if they were going to merge, they would have to do that on their own. The OIA and the ILH would have to come together. If they want my help or any of my thoughts, then, yeah, I would help them with that, but that’s something that has to be done on their level.

Q: Do you have an opinion on what the prospects are for that? Or do you think it’s a good idea, just speaking from your position?

A: It might a good idea for some sports, but, I mean, that’s something that the league leadership has to decide for themselves.

Q: Another thing I’ve heard a lot about lately is recruiting … this idea that kids in the public schools get a geographic exception and switch schools; Kaiser (High School) comes up a lot … Maybe you could just address the issue of high-school recruiting from your perspective?

A: What people have to understand is that just because a kid is on a geographic exception, that doesn’t mean they can play right away. So, say a student played football at a public school one year, they couldn’t GE to another public school and play football the following year. The family actually has to move to that area so that it would be their home school. We’ve dealt with transfers at schools in the private and public systems, even interisland. We have a rule about transfers. We try to take into account that not every situation is going to be a parent transferring their kid over for athletic reasons. There’s going to be some benefits to certain schools, and that’s why they’re GEing. Like Kaiser has the International Baccalaureate program. Other schools might have ROTC programs. …

Q: So if you’re only seeking a GE to play a sport, basically you can’t do that?

A: Right. I don’t think principals would allow a GE for sports. For a principal to approve a GE, the student’s family has to have a valid reasons as to why they want to transfer into a school on a GE and I don’t think a sport is a valid reason. It could be something else, like I mentioned. But if they’re on a GE and they played the same sport a previous year, they wouldn’t be allowed to play right away. So in your Kaiser example, they wouldn’t have had any GEs playing football that had played football the year before (at a different school). It would all be people who actually moved into the community.

Q: Why not let a kid transfer for a strong team? If their gift is that they’re an athlete, versus a student whose gift is in math or the performing arts and they’re transferring for that. Why not let them transfer to a strong sports program?

A: Our thing is about participation and we don’t want it to be that if you’re from one community, you have to go to another community to play. Doing that would kind of kill the other communities. And I think the strength of a league, especially like the OIA, is in their numbers. (The OIA has about two dozen football teams, for example). … That’s what makes their league so strong, and why people talk about merging, is because the OIA has so much depth. But if you allow certain schools to just recruit and take those kids away, sooner or later you’re going to have situations like in the other leagues where you’ll have three strong football schools and everywhere else there’s a lack of interest in football. …

Q: The last question about recruiting: What about from the private-school angle? …

A: Same thing: We have the transfer rule, which means they’d have to sit out for a year … If it’s a choice that they’re making, we want it to be based on academics or other things. So say they’re at a public school playing baseball, they know that they wouldn’t be able to play baseball for that private school right away.

Q: Basically the idea is that you want to discourage people from transferring solely for athletics?

A: Yes, that’s right.

Q: And that’s all in the statewide eligibility rule?

A: Yes.

Q: You mentioned your concussion-awareness program. … Do you have a formal policy on concussion treatment?

A: Yes, the Department of Education has a policy about return-to-play, so all the public schools follow that. The kids get baseline-tested and if they get a concussion or diagnosed with one, there are certain procedures regarding return-to-play. The private schools follow a different concussion protocol, but I do believe they have a return-to-play policy as well. In order for us to raise awareness, we make all our coaches take concussion tests and be concussion-certified by the National Federation of High School Associations. So they have to do that, which is good because I think they’re the ones who can recognize the impact on the kids, and not push their kids to return to the game. Whereas like when we were growing up, pretty much we’d get banged up and just shake it off and go back in.

Q: Could we talk for a minute about opportunities for girls? …

A: I’m also on the superintendent’s gender-equity committee and I think in the past 10 years, 20 years, there’s been a steady growth to where it’s almost 50-50 in terms of boys and girls participation. … At the state tournament level, we make sure that as many girls participate in state tournaments as boys. …

Q: I wanted to ask you about this piece in The Atlantic, "The Case Against High School Sports." It basically argues that the United States is falling behind the rest of the world in education partly because we emphasize athletics over academics. Have you read it?

A: No, I haven’t seen that. … That’s pretty much contradictory to everything I have read and contradictory to what I see happening. To play high-school sports you have to have a minimum 2.0 GPA; that’s a rule. You have to make sure that you’re in good standing, in terms of behavior and all that. A lot of these kids, if they didn’t have athletics to fall back on or to strive toward, they would be failing in the classroom and they wouldn’t put in the effort. … In the middle-school athletics program that we’ve just started, we’ve seen dramatic increases in kids’ interest in school because to participate they have to be in good standing. I think all the principals in the state would agree that if it wasn’t for athletics, they’d lose a lot of kids. …

Q: Anything else you’d like to talk about?

A: I did want to mention that we’re starting a pilot program of regionals next season. Girls basketball is going to be the first state tournament that we do that way; it will be a two-week format. So we’re going to hold two regionals on Oahu — the OIA and the ILH champ — and then we’re going to do one on Maui and one on the Big Island. For the first time we’ll have the state tournaments on all four islands, with the finals on Oahu. So that’s something that we hope will generate a lot of excitement.