The Oahu Interscholastic Association is considering an abbreviated spring sports season.

Athletic directors and principals voted overwhelmingly to play a regular season only, according to a source, but some administrators say it is not a done deal.

“We haven’t heard anything final or official. We are all trying to finalize our own schools’ practice plans and work on step one before the next,” McKinley Athletic Director Bob Morikuni said.

The Maui Interscholastic League also voted for a similar format but left Molokai and Lanai off the slate due to a policy prohibiting inter-island travel by its student-athletes.

The OIA is said to have approved competition in baseball, softball, tennis, golf, track and field and boys volleyball. Two other sports considered “high contact,” judo and water polo, are said to be still under review.

An official involved in Monday’s meeting said businessman Keith Amemiya, who directed the Save Our Sports campaign in 2009 that raised nearly $1.2 million to offset state budget cuts, has offered to help raise funds to help underwrite the spring sports return.

“Keith is jumping in to lend a hand, again, to help get this off the ground,” an official confirmed but did not cite an amount, saying the process was on-going.

The timetable for competition is expected to run from April to perhaps mid-May. Given the narrow window for competition and schools playing differing amounts of games, it is said to be unlikely there will be state championships or OIA playoffs.

Schools that have “blended” formats with some of the student body on campus will begin spring sports workouts sooner than schools that are in virtual learning mode. Kahuku expects to return after spring break (March 15-19). So will McKinley.

“For McKinley, we are going to try and have the students physically on campus for athletics on March 22. We are finalizing our workout pods and retraining program, and gather our students’ paper work and rosters. We’ll be working on that until then,” Morikuni said.

Moanalua has been in blended learning status since November, athletic director Joel Kawachi said. Radford is also in blended mode.

“We plan on playing a scrimmage with an ILH school for both baseball and softball soon, hopefully,” longtime Radford athletic director Kelly Sur said. “If we need to test before playing an ILH school, then we will do it.”

Hawaii’s public high schools have not played sports since March of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The OIA has made a concerted effort to play a spring season in ’21 because of the ’20 cancellation.

Sur, the former Rams football coach, expressed some disappointment about the length of the league’s process.

“Personally, I believe we waited too long. We are the only state that did not have any start for the three seasons. More than a few states have had five times the infection rate, as well as deaths, and they are done with both fall and winter seasons,” Sur said. “You would think we being educators would follow the science.”

Two states that postponed fall and winter sports, California and Nevada, recently approved the return of football for spring season. California also brought indoor sports back for spring. California’s threshold is 14 new cases daily per 100,000 capita, or 140 per million. On Oahu, the threshold set by the previous City and County administration was roughly 20 for the 1 million residents of Oahu. New Mayor Rick Blangiardi ushered Oahu into Tier 3 on Feb. 25 and hopes Tier 4 will be effective on March 25 with Gov. David Ige’s approval.

“We started blended learning about a month ago,” Sur noted. “I told the (league) body, we should start working out now. We have the waiver form. One-hundred percent of our parents wanted their kids back. I’m not trying to say that I’m right, or whatever the superintendent, governor or executive director decide is wrong or right, but we weren’t transparent. To me, that’s a black eye. It’s just sad. There was a time that the OIA stood for something. The OIA was the forerunner. They had the (courage) and they were initiators. It’s real different. The DOE is changing.”

Though few administrators are willing to speak on record about the process, there is a sense of relief. Leilehua athletic director Nolan Tokuda is stoked.

“I’m excited for the spring student-athletes. It’s a great opportunity for us to learn the new normal for COVID protocols before next fall season,” he said.

Morikuni utilizes social media as a tool to keep student-athletes at McKinley informed.

“It’s good to have sports come back. Really, though, any progress to return to a better normal is a good thing, sports being one of them,” Morikuni said. “We are happy it’s a step in the right direction. We are going to do our best to make it as safe as possible for our coaches and students, and we have a plan in place. It’s always a good thing to get school back the way it was.”

Oahu’s private-school Interscholastic League of Honolulu is moving ahead with plans for a spring season. The league’s dependence on C&C facilities for baseball and softball is a crucial factor. Permits for usage have not been allotted yet.

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The Star-Advertiser’s Ferd Lewis contributed to this report.