Hawai'i's athletes deserve better fate

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Columnist

A state high school athletic season that was so rich with possibilities shouldn't end now with the kind of bitter history that nobody wants to see.

All eight spring state championships effectively being shuttered, collateral victims to the 19-day public school strike and the 14 class days it has claimed, is no way to end this athletic year.

For the first time since 1956, islands-wide championships, taking in both territorial and state titles, would be lost and with them the hopes of hundreds of young athletes who deserve better.

The strike is threatening to pack a powerful double whammy for the state's athletes, who stand to be twice victimized unless a solution can be found.

It is bad enough that, caught in the middle of this withering strike, they have lost, along with considerable educational momentum, valuable class time and instruction.

Now, they also stand to lose out on what is the high point of their athletic year, statewide championship competition.

The class time, thankfully, will be made up, as it must be. But you'd also like to think that if the best minds in public and private education earnestly put their heads together some way could be constructed to rescue the state tournaments, too.

You'd hope there could be some creative and collaborative way out of this mess that would give the athletes their year's worth both in the classroom and on the athletic fields without compromising the educational mission.

The way Superintendent of Schools Paul LeMahieu first laid it out yesterday, cancelling public school participation in state championships, had to be particularly disappointing for those seniors for whom states were to be the pinnacle of their athletic careers.

This is competition that months — and years — have been spent preparing for. Events that are once lost can never be made up.

That can hardly be welcomed news to those hopeful of college scholarship opportunities. Not only for these seniors but for next year's graduates for whom the junior season is an evaluation year.

That's why, after weeks of talking about contingency plans and the what-ifs of when a settlement eventually emerged, it is hard to believe there isn't an alternative to closing down the state championships.

Just as state and teacher union negotiators owed their constituencies a way through the contract impasse, so, too, do responsible education officials have an obligation to the athletes and their tax-paying families to make an exhaustive, good-faith effort toward a resolution.

After all, if you are a senior, where do you go to get a refund on what should have been some of the best memories of your high school career?