WAIKOLOA, Hawaii »The regional format is one step closer to becoming all the rage.

Four tournaments moved a day closer to adopting the 2-week format on the third day of the Hawaii Interscholastic Athletic Directors Association annual meeting at the Hilton Waikoloa Village on Friday.

Division I soccer and volleyball, for both genders, narrowly passed through committee 23-22-1 and will head to Sunday’s vote. The measure passed Friday’s straw poll 24-0, but 23 athletic directors abstained. After talking to their leagues, those who weren’t sure made up their minds. There is no telling how they will vote once their leagues get ahold of them.

If it passes that, it is up to the HHSAA to approve it on Monday on Oahu. But the HHSAA is a team player on this issue, even though it has become regarded as executive director Chris Chun’s baby.

"If it’s what the body wants, we’ll implement it," Chun said. "If not, we will go back to the way it was before. But this is better financially and cuts down on missed time in class."

Under the proposal, which is tweaked a little bit from this year’s experiments in boys volleyball and girls basketball, there will be two six-team regionals on different islands, with top Oahu schools staying home and top seeds from neighbor islands not needing to travel to the Gathering Place before the semifinal round.

A concern was making a school play a first-round game on one island and moving to another island for another game the next day.

The Kamehameha boys volleyball team faced such a dilemma in the most recent state tournament, beating Kahuku on Friday before losing to Kamehameha-Hawaii on its home floor 26 hours later. This proposal will eliminate that. Another bone of contention was having schools travel for one game and returning home after they lose.

"It passed out of committee," Chun said. "Everyone raised a lot of good points about the soccer thing being a health issue and with this format kids miss less school time. We brought back consolations to a limited extent."

Travel aside, the biggest issue seemed to be safety and that seems to be driving the bus. A lot of time was spent convincing voters that soccer is a collision sport and four games in four days is not optimal.

The other three groups spent nearly as much time in committee on Saturday, but a lot of them came out asking if Group 4 was still in session.