For nearly 50 years, Hawaii football fans’ clamoring for an alliance of the Oahu Interscholastic Association and Interscholastic League of Honolulu was a hot-button topic that continually surfaced, right up until Feb. 13, when the Honolulu Star-Advertiser broke the news of the long-awaited partnership.

The historic agreement for the two organizations to play a full slate of interleague, regular-season football games capped months of negotiations. It also signaled the end of a 48-year split that started in 1970, when five public schools bitterly bolted the ILH to join what had previously been called the Rural OIA.

Since that exodus, few thought there would ever be a reconciliation, but it will become a reality the weekend of Aug. 10-11.

The agreement was reached in part to ensure more competitive and safe games and to avoid the blowouts and mismatches that had come to frustrate Hawaii prep football fans. It came to fruition through behind-the-scenes elbow grease, open-mindedness and sincere communication and cooperation.

Over the years, rightly or wrongly, the OIA caught flak for not wanting to reunite. But despite accusations of stubbornness thrown at the public-school league, its reasons for staying separate from the private schools were founded in a concern for fairness.

OIA schools, after all, cannot draw players from every area of the state like the ILH schools can. Neither can they offer an equal incentive to paid tuition. Overcoming those advantages was at the heart of any possible reunion, and the subject festered.

The bottom-line is that those advantages could only be mitigated, and that is what Keith Amemiya — chief architect of the deal — worked to achieve. He found what would make most of the parties on both sides want to bridge what to some looked like an impossibly wide gap.

OVERCOMING THE HURDLES

One factor that fostered Amemiya’s crusade was the OIA’s success in the state football tournaments.

At Kahuku, where the slogan could easily be that it takes a whole community to raise a football team, the public-school Red Raiders have won eight of the 19 top-tier football state championships — bolstering the argument that perceived privilege can be overcome with the right amount of family roots and work ethic. Substantial community pride is prevalent at many other OIA schools — including Waianae, Farrington, Mililani, Campbell and Kapolei — so it’s no surprise that they will join Kahuku and the ILH’s Big Three (Saint Louis, Punahou, Kamehameha) in the Open Division of the 2018 deal that historians might someday look back on as revolutionary.

At least two other factors — a shift in the recruiting landscape and the promise of financial help — diminished a perceived public-school vs. private-school imbalance.

That seismic revamping in 1970 was mostly due to the OIA’s accusations of ILH recruiting. Nowadays, it’s no secret that recruiting (a no-no that rarely, if ever, incurs a penalty) can be done by public schools as well as private schools. Passively or aggressively, recruiting appears to be just part of the sport’s fabric. The average fan is not interested in exactly how star players show up on campus, but it happens, whether it’s by direct or covert invitation or a behind-the-scenes suggestion by a team booster. And, in the OIA’s case, it can be as subtle as the fact that many public school players, bolstered by their parents’ wishes to attend a superior program or to play for a certain coach, can and will get a district exception or establish residency in order to attend the school they feel is best.

Then there’s the money, Amemiya’s ace in the hole.

In whirlwind negotiations leading to the accord, he included a provision for all football-playing public high school athletics departments in the state to share $1 million in each of the two pilot years. That will give public school football players an upgrade to their athletic experience, considerably offsetting the aforementioned public vs. private imbalance.

On top of that, the OIA stands to rake in more money than ever before at the gate. OIA schools will keep all profits after expenses for any home games against ILH teams and about 75 percent from OIA vs. ILH games at ILH stadiums or neutral fields such as Aloha Stadium.

Without money as part of the equation, it’s safe to say that there would not have been a deal.

ENGINEERING THE AGREEMENT

Many fans were convinced that a magician saying “Abracadabra” was the only way for change of this magnitude to occur. But the agreement turned out to be the handiwork of a master negotiator, a person comfortable in the middle of a swirling controversy, ready with a smile and an appreciative handshake — even to those who have diametrically opposed views. That man was Amemiya.

Still plugged in to high school sports eight years after leaving his post as the Hawaii High School Athletic Association executive director, Amemiya faced staunch opposition, especially from some of the retired public school principals and athletic directors.

“The reason I started pursuing the reunion of the two leagues was because I heard that there was interest from the OIA in reuniting,” Amemiya said. The first he heard that — from more than a few administrators and coaches — was in the fall of 2015.

“Before then, every sign to me was that they had no interest, and if you don’t have an interested dance partner, you’re not going to dance.”

With this new willingness on the part of the OIA to at least listen to the possibilities, Amemiya pressed on.

“I also saw that the OIA was experiencing the same challenges the ILH was facing in terms of the disparity between opponents, which led to lopsided scores, less fan interest and even lower participation numbers.”

COMMUNITY INTERESTED

Through the years, Amemiya was also armed with the knowledge that the general community was abundantly interested in the endeavor and that the private sector was willing to offer financial support.

“The passage of time helped as well, because a lot of the administrators who were involved in the split in 1970 are no longer involved in high school athletics,” he said. “This newer generation of administrators and coaches were largely unaware of and unaffected by the reasons for the split. My understanding is that the relationship of OIA and ILH ADs before, during and after the split was quite acrimonious. Time moves on and those animosities lessen.”

In April 2016, Amemiya drew up an initial proposal with input from the ILH and one interested bloc of the OIA. There were two other OIA factions unaccounted for in that plan’s development — those against it and those on the fence, and they ultimately killed it. The OIA, as one body, was not ready for such a drastic change, and the school principals voted it down after the ILH passed it.

Then in August 2016, after the regular season had already started, the HHSAA executive board — with the OIA as the only one of the five Hawaii leagues not casting a vote in favor — approved a plan to change the state tournament from two to three divisions to better address the perceived competitive imbalance throughout the state. The move came suddenly and the OIA temporarily went along with it despite the fact that, for the first time, two ILH teams would be allowed into the highest tier. That’s something the OIA had fought for years, and, not surprisingly, worked to successfully eradicate the following year.

At the state’s athletic directors’ legislative meeting in June 2017, the HHSAA voted to continue the three state-tourney tiers, but OIA executive director Ray Fujino announced that his league would only participate in two of the three divisions. The HHSAA panicked, scrambled throughout the summer in emergency meetings, and finally came up with a workable state tournament solution for that fall. The OIA’s shrewd political move showed that — with its 22 teams, by far the most in the state — the public school league was serious about wanting more control in creating the blueprint for the future of high school football.

Through all of this time, however, there were signs that the OIA was going to eventually cooperate with Amemiya’s architectural design. Harold Tanaka, the OIA football coordinator, made it known in early 2017 that the OIA was in talks about changing its own league format to three tiers, but that it wouldn’t happen until at least the 2018 season.

WAITING PATIENTLY

In the meantime, Amemiya — with behind-the-curtain support from OIA coaches and administrators continuing to materialize — waited patiently for his second go-round. The ILH, with only seven teams and struggling every year just to make a full schedule, also waited and hoped for a breakthrough.

“What I did the second time was to get input from all the stakeholders both past and present, either a current or former OIA or ILH administrator, to try to understand their perspective and craft a deal,” Amemiya said. “I talked to every AD and principal I know. For the many who were against it, I wanted to find out what they were opposed to and how it could be crafted for them to like it or at least not object to it.

 Click here to view the 2018 OIA-ILH football schedule.

“They gave me the history of the split and why there was a split, and basically it came down to recruiting and the unfair advantage private schools have over public schools. They feel that disadvantage still exists today. The fact they even met with me was a sign, a very positive sign. They didn’t come away fully convinced, but at least they let me say my piece and in turn I let them say their piece.

“The OIA stood to gain from more-balanced competition and less-lopsided scores and better turnout for their teams if they moved to a system that involved the ILH. I’m sure the money didn’t hurt, but it was just one of the reasons. I think they trusted me that this was not designed to only help the ILH, but that it was designed to help the OIA and teams across the state because any monies raised will be shared equally among all the (football-playing) public schools statewide.”

AUTONOMY IS IMPORTANT

Amemiya also thinks the fact that the OIA and ILH playing each other for a full slate of regular-season games but still continuing to determine their own league champions — and thereby maintaining a good measure of autonomy — makes the deal even sweeter. That aspect was not part of the first iteration of the plan.

“It’s important for each league to have their own champions heading into the state tournament,” said Amemiya, who worked closely with Fujino and others on the pact’s essentials.

After that 1970 rift, the only truly meaningful OIA vs. ILH football competition came at the Oahu Prep Bowl, a de facto state championship game. That period (1973 to 1998) gave credence to the belief that ILH dominance was real. Even though the OIA won four of the first seven Prep Bowls, the ILH ended the series with a 19-6-1 edge, thanks to Saint Louis’ 13 championships in a row.

With the onset of the state tournament in 1999 and Kahuku’s forthcoming grand success, the ILH’s reputation as the preeminent league was, at the very least, tarnished.

In 2004, the two leagues agreed to a handful of crossover interleague games annually. For various reasons, those crossover games petered out by the second decade of the new century, but that period showed that the two leagues were capable of the type of cooperation that would be necessary for the eventual alliance. While it lasted, some ILH teams had as many as three games per season against OIA opponents.

The OIA’s Tanaka, who was responsible for creating this fall’s interleague schedule, is looking forward to the new football tableau.

“I feel this is going to be great for both leagues,” he said. “It will bring new interest with the new competition. I’m hoping it brings larger crowds.”

Prep Football Before & After 1970 Rift by Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Scribd

CREDIT TO THE ARCHITECT

‘Iolani athletic director and football coach Wendell Look opened up about Amemiya’s influence on the burgeoning new era of Hawaii football.

“Keith has always been the point guy,” Look said. “He deserves credit. He got people to listen and to see the benefit of the leagues coming together. A lot of credit also goes to the OIA administrators who were looking out for student-athletes and doing what’s best for them. You can’t fault their reasons and the feelings they’ve had in the past. Times have changed.”

The OIA-ILH alliance is another in a long string of accomplishments by Amemiya. As the HHSAA executive director, he oversaw the creation of classification in football and other sports starting in 2003. In 2009, he spearheaded the Save Our Sports program that raised funds for public high school athletic programs after severe budget cuts. He also facilitated a donation from the NFL to Roosevelt High that went toward the installation of an artificial turf field for the Rough Riders.

Amemiya’s work on the OIA-ILH deal is not done. He is in the process of raising funds from businesses and community members that will go to the public school athletic departments. He recently helped to secure $850,000 from the Legislature for athletic bus transportation in 2018-19.

“Many ADs have told me that they typically run out of the money in the transportation budget before the end of December,” Amemiya said. “That’s less than half the athletic school year.”

A HEALING TIME?

Simply put, the OIA-ILH agreement gives fans top-drawer Oahu football matchups every week. The financial fringe benefits and a return to the longed-for rivalries of Hawaii high school football’s heyday give it extra depth.

And the fact that rival leagues with a contentious past have decided to bury those hard feelings and push on to work together for mutual benefit in the name of safety, competition and fairness for all Oahu football-playing student-athletes makes it a supreme accomplishment — and quite possibly “the ultimate deal.”

“It’s about time,” bellowed Jim Leahey, the former broadcaster of University of Hawaii sports who recently retired after five decades. “It was prideful. They were saying, ‘You guys have the advantage, so we’re going our own way.’ It never had the romance it could have had and they lost out on that same great competition from the old days. It was a perceived kind of thing that the public schools were inferior. And now, the public schools have come on. They have an elite group of teams that can deal with anything the private schools throw at them. Over the years, there were so many people in the same positions of authority in both leagues that didn’t like each other. There was personality conflict there. They were stubborn.”

In a Jan. 23, 1970, column, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin’s Bill Kwon compared the ILH breakup in 1970 to a dentist working to fix the pain of an existing problem and leaving a gaping wound.

“Only time will heal it,” Kwon wrote prophetically, “although it’s painful at the moment.”

Click here to view the 2018 OIA-ILH football schedule.