Proposal would reunite Hawaii’s prep football leagues

A new era in Oahu high school football could be on the horizon.

If a new proposal continues to gain steam, a union of the Oahu Interscholastic Association and the Interscholastic League of Honolulu could be here faster than you can say “high-speed rail.”

Fans have been clamoring for a competitive reorganization for years, and this plan — for football only — is getting traction behind the scenes.

According to trusted Honolulu Star-Advertiser sources, ILH principals will vote May 3 whether to approve the restructuring. That is the first of three big hurdles. If it passes there, votes by OIA principals and then by the Hawaii High School Athletic Association would follow. Sources say the plan has support among key decision-makers within the OIA and overwhelming overall support from the ILH and HHSAA.

Sources said the realignment plan, which would reunite public and private schools in the regular season for the first time since their split after the 1969 season, was developed by former HHSAA Executive Director Keith Amemiya, OIA Executive Director Ray Fujino, ILH Executive Director Blane Gaison and ILH assistant Georges Gilbert.

Agenhart Ellis, a Kamehameha Schools player in the pre-1970 era who went on to become an athletic director at Farrington and is now retired but still involved in high school athletics, was asked what he thought about the possible union of the leagues.

“If they work up an agreement where it benefits both sides, great, I would be for it,” he said.

The three-year pilot project — presently called the OIA-ILH Football Alliance — would be reviewed annually and calls for an Open Division of 10 teams playing a nine-game regular-season schedule. There would also be a 10-team Division I and a nine-team Division II.

Reached on Monday at the OIA office, Fujino — in contrast to the sources — said he was not aware of the talks and said the league had in-house talks about aligning with the ILH in January but decided against it for 2016.

The proposal was emailed to more than 50 athletic directors and school heads. Gaison acknowledged that the two leagues are in discussions but did not want to comment further. Amemiya could not be reached for comment.

IN THE OPEN Division, the ILH’s three prominent football programs — Saint Louis, Kamehameha and Punahou — would join seven top OIA football teams to be determined by that league. Sources believe six of the seven would be chosen based on on-field performance throughout the years — Kahuku, Mililani, Waianae, Kapolei, Farrington and Campbell. Several other schools would have the potential to be the seventh school, including Leilehua, Kailua and Kaiser.

One of the goals in expanding to a three-tier system is to eliminate or reduce the number of blowouts that result when perennial powers play side by side with teams that sporadically or never reach such heights. Last season, McKinley, which in a down year struggled to put enough players on the field, lost to eventual state champion Kahuku 78-0 and Waianae 90-0 in back-to-back weeks.

The aim is to create competitive balance by pairing similarly talented schools against each other every week, cutting down on routs and forfeits. If games are more competitive, the hope is fan interest will increase; one source said high-ranking officials from both leagues believe the football revenue would grow significantly because of the better matchups.

AFTER THE REGULAR season, the top six teams in the standings would move on to the Open Division state tournament, likely marking the first time more than one ILH team qualifies.

Division I would have 10 teams and would include such typical examples as ‘Iolani and Damien from the ILH and Moanalua, Pearl City and Kalani from the OIA. Nine teams, including Pac-Five and Saint Francis from the ILH along with Waialua from the OIA, would form Division II. The alignment would be reviewed annually, with any concerns about a team not fitting into its particular division being brought to the table. Currently, the OIA moves teams up and down between Divisions I and II every two years, with win-loss record the only criterion. A Division II school will commonly earn a move up to Division I, only to graduate its best players and flounder against schools that are strong year-in and year-out.

One of the concerns that stood in the way of past proposals of this sort was the issue of recruiting and transfers. Public school football players from the OIA sometimes opted to switch schools and receive a paid education at a private school in the ILH, leading to the rich getting richer on the football field and the public schools losing star players.

UNDER THE NEW format, if approved, transferring players would need to sit out two years before playing, a strict measure that would ensure in most cases that once a player enters a high school, he or she is not lured away to another one.

Another concern was the apportionment of gate receipts. Because the OIA has more schools (22) than the ILH (seven), an equitable system was never seriously considered and would have been difficult to hammer out. Now, whatever loss, if any, in gate revenue the OIA takes by forming this alliance would be regained through a $3 million ($1 million per year) donation from local business groups. The money would go to every Oahu public high school for their athletic departments (not just football). According to sources, Amemiya has numerous pledges toward that figure already. Sources also said that two former Hawaii high school football stars now in the NFL, Marcus Mariota of the Tennessee Titans and Manti Te’o of the San Diego Chargers, have pledged their support.

There are those who believe an OIA-ILH union would make it unfair for the schools in the OIA, which is perceived to be the weaker league in football. But, of the 17 D-I championships since the inaugural state tournament in 1999, 10 have gone to OIA teams, including Kahuku’s 39-14 victory in the final over Saint Louis in November.

One byproduct of this proposed alliance is it finds a home for ‘Iolani. The Raiders have been dominant in D-II while faring poorly against the iron of D-I. When the Raiders returned to the ILH’s top tier last season, it lost its six league games by an average of 23.5 points. With the top D-I teams moving up to the Open Division, ‘Iolani appears to be a perfect fit in the proposed D-I.

Another byproduct would be more regular-season games for ILH teams instead of the four to six games on each team’s schedule now.

Since 1970 — when the public schools in the ILH left to join the ROIA to form the OIA — the ILH and OIA have played their regular seasons separately. From 1973 to 1999 the two leagues competed for a de facto state championship in the season-ending Oahu Prep Bowl. In 1999, under the guidance of Amemiya, a state tournament was formed for football for the first time, with all five leagues statewide competing. In 2003 a Division II was created for state tournaments — once again under Amemiya’s coordination — to help level the playing field.

FOR SOME an OIA-ILH alliance would have the potential to restore some of the shine from the glory days of football, that pre-1970 period that is talked about by the old-timers with reverence, when the old Honolulu Stadium was filled with 25,000 spectators for rivalry games such as Roosevelt vs. Punahou and Farrington vs. Kamehameha. Prep football was king in those days, when Thanksgiving Day games were the season’s centerpiece.

Prep football was so big then that Farrington’s historic victory over Kameha­meha in 1965 was splashed across the front page of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin with a headline reading, “The Day the Govs Won It All.”

That story, written by Jim Becker, galvanized the Kalihi community and forged lifetime friendships. In fact, members of that team, including Stan Cadiente, Walter Rodrigues, Ambrose Costa, Jim Kalili and Tom Gushiken, would meet annually to celebrate that victory.

If this new proposal passes, some old rivalries could be renewed, and new ones would likely be formed.

If there is enough interest and travel logistics could be formulated, it’s possible that top neighbor island football schools, such as Baldwin and Hilo, could be admitted to the Open Division. But, sources said, the travel costs make such a scenario prohibitive. And those top non-Oahu schools’ body of on-field results appear to fit better into D-I. No Big Island team has ever won a D-I state tournament game, and Baldwin has a losing record in its many appearances. But the neighbor islands are likely to benefit from the anticipated increase of revenue from the state tournament, a portion of which is given back to all participating schools.