Unfairness of OIA football schedule draws an obvious foul

As it stands today, the 2017 Oahu Interscholastic Association football schedule gets an F.

Try again.

It is, quite simply, the worst, most ineptly produced and unfair schedule I have seen in 40 years of writing about sports.

It includes Wednesday and Thursday games we were told were caused by a shortage of trained field officials. It was bad enough that these midweek games would cause some havoc with rest on school nights and rest between games if they were going to be spread out equally among the schools, so that no one would have more than one or two.

We were told this would be a shared burden. But, as reported on Hawaii Prep World, this is not the case. The schedule is preposterous in its unfairness.

The drafters can blame the lack of referees for having to play midweek games. But they can’t put it on that situation that Mililani has zero games on Wednesday or Thursday while Kaiser is among nine schools that have three and Waialua has four.

Since all seven of Mililani’s league games are on Friday or Saturday, it has no situations where there is less than six days of rest between games.

Meanwhile, Kaiser’s arduous slate includes a 12-day death march of games against Kahuku, Moanalua and Waianae. This is especially crazy when you consider Kaiser expects to field a varsity roster of around 25 players at best. Just an injury or two against the behemoth and deep roster of perennial powerhouse Kahuku, and Kaiser could be forced to forfeit the next game or even the next two.

Kaiser is also a victim of being forced to play in the upper division of the OIA’s two-tier system when the league’s athletic directors vetoed a three-tier system the coaches voted for that would have made sense.

Horrendous scheduling and dysfunctional classification combine to make a public safety problem even worse — while student-athletes at some schools won’t have enough time between games to recover from the rigors of a collision sport, all who will be forced to play on school nights won’t get enough rest to perform optimally in class the next day.

Kaiser is far from the only school that is forced to deal with this situation, but it seems to have been singled out for special treatment. Varsity football coach Arnold Martinez was outspoken in his criticism of the idea of playing midweek games before the schedule came out. Also, Kaiser was not popular with other OIA schools when the Cougars won the Division II state championship in 2013 with several key players who were district exemptions.

Can someone explain why Waialua is slated to play four midweek games? This tiny Division II school is one of the most isolated on the island. On Thursday, Aug. 31, Waialua is scheduled to play Kalani at Kaiser’s stadium. That’s a 40-mile distance that takes an hour to complete. With varsity games starting around 8 p.m., the Waialua contingent won’t get back to its school until well after midnight.

Football players, cheerleaders, band members and students who want to support their school teams are being put in situations where the extra-curricular activity jeopardizes their right to access to a good education.

And let’s not forget about the coaches and other adults who staff these games or relatives and others who want to attend as (paying) fans. Many of them have jobs to go to the next morning.

This won’t be a problem for Mililani since it has no midweek games. Kahuku has one school-night game, Thursday, Aug. 31 at Aiea.

Why is it that schools with smaller programs and short rosters are being asked to play more often with less rest? That’s just asking for more injuries and more forfeits.

It looks like the powerful schools with plenty of depth are being protected, when those are the schools that could rest starters and still win handily, or despite injuries.

The worst thing about the OIA is the hypocrisy of how it cries foul in regard to fairness in issues with the island’s private school league, yet is more than willing to cannibalize its own weaker members.

When I previously wrote about the unacceptability of high school football games going so late, I placed a call to the DOE. It was never returned.

The situation has been made exponentially worse for some schools now because of so many games with short rest periods and games that now will go late on school nights, not just weekends.

The OIA and DOE can ignore me. But if this schedule isn’t fixed, the DOE’s new leadership won’t be able to do that with angry parents whose children’s education and reasonable expectation for safety suffer because of the OIA’s irresponsibility and favoritism.

If I had a child affiliated with football, band or cheerleading at Kaiser or Waialua or one of many other Oahu public high schools, I’d be talking to my lawyer after seeing this schedule.

Trash it and try again, OIA. This one gets an F.