Plans to save state tournament offered

By Dennis Anderson
Advertiser Staff Writer

Three different plans for a blitz of six state tournaments on the third weekend of May, none of which require lost class time, will be submitted today to Superintendent of Schools Paul LeMahieu.

Eight championships in five sports are threatened because the 20-day public school teachers strike has not left enough time to hold them in their usual format and also make up lost class time before graduations start on May 25.

Though all three plans meet LeMahieu's requirement of full class attendance before he will allow public school students to participate, there are striking differences in the plans.

Two call for reducing the tournament fields for baseball and girls basketball from 12 to eight teams.

A plan drafted by athletic directors of the O'ahu Interscholastic Association reduces the fields from 12 teams to eight and has no activity on Sunday, May 20, in deference to Church of Jesus Christ and other religious practices.

Before the teachers strike set back games and meets nearly four weeks, eight tournaments were scattered throughout May with no more than two per week. The team events each were four days with 12 teams.

The OIA plan was agreed to reluctantly by some athletic directors who felt state tournaments should be scrapped to allow more students to play another week of league games. It requires that semifinal and final basketball and baseball games both be played on Saturday, May 19.

Four baseball games on Friday night, May 18, would be played on at least three sites because Neighbor Island teams can not leave for O'ahu until classes end in mid-afternoon.

The OIA plan reduces golf from two days plus a practice day to a single day of two 18-hole rounds, morning and afternoon, on May 12. Tennis would be compacted from three days to one, May 19, and the number of entries would be reduced by as much as 50 per cent.

"This is a nightmare," said OIA executive secretary Dwight Toyama, exhausted after an all-day meeting of the league's 22 athletic directors at which, he said, "we hammered at this for hours and hours."

Students return to class today and the first athletic contests since April 4 will be held next Tuesday, giving them a week of conditioning. Most leagues had completed less than half their seasons when the strike hit and now they will have two weeks to finish up.

"Our first preference is just to finish our own season (and have no state championships)," Toyama said, "but we are being very, very flexible and do as much as possible to satisfy everybody."

All three plans rejected using the Memorial Day weekend of May 25-28 for tournaments. Toyama noted that five OIA schools will have commencements on May 25 or 26.

He also is concerned about a conflict with proms at five schools on the proposed new championship night of May 19.

Keith Amemiya, executive director of the Hawai'i High School Athletic Association, will present a plan for eight-team tournaments that start on Friday night, May 18, and end Sunday, May 20.

Amemiya said he had promised not to reveal details until today's "solution" meeting at 12:30 p.m. in LeMahieu's office.

The third plan would retain the 12-team baseball and basketball tournaments but cram them from the usual four days and four nights into two days and two nights, Friday night through Sunday afternoon. It was being refined last night by Windward State Sen. Bob Hogue.

"I just want to get it on the table for consideration," Hogue said. "My plan doesn't reduce the number of teams and kids who can get the special experience of a state tournament."

Hogue, Toyama, Amemiya and Winston Sakurai, first chair of the Board of Education, and possibly others will meet with LeMahieu to decide whether or not there is a suitable schedule that can save the state tournaments.

"Our objective is to have every tournament held in some form or other," Amemiya said. "For a lot of kids, the state tournament is a once-in-a-lifetime experience."