Prep cold war still simmers
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Columnist
If you thought the cold war in high school sports was over, guess again.
You need look no further than some of the battle lines being drawn over the proposal to create a two-tier football playoff system to know the decades-old public school vs. private school turf war continues.
You need only hear some of the whispers and read between the lines in some of the public posturing to recognize forces are being mustered anew.
This is almost Hatfield vs. McCoy stuff, an internecine feud that predates even the breakup of the old Interscholastic League of Honolulu in 1970 and endures in some quarters to this day whenever the ILH and O'ahu Interscholastic Association bang heads.
You would think, with the passage of years and seasons, some of the old distrust would have abated by now. You would hope that as some of the central figures have passed on, the ancient animosities would have gone with them.
But, despite the change of generations, some grudges have been passed down and, apparently, many hard feelings still remain.
As a respected Neighbor Island school athletic director who has followed the OIA-ILH skirmishes put it yesterday, "Some things never change. This is the same thing that has been going on for years."
It is, in part, what nearly kept the state championship in football getting off the drawing board in the first place and what has been largely responsible for the failure to institute classification in the state tournament, despite its existence in league play.
If not for the Neighbor Island leagues, who carried the day and made a state championship possible, we'd now have five separate league championships and no state tournament. While the ILH and OIA voted along hardened battle lines, it was the Neighbor Islands leagues, who brought a less jaundiced perspective to the table that made the difference.
Unless there is a genuine willingness to work together for the betterment of all and a dedication to finding a workable middle ground, it could be tough going for the two-tier playoff proposal, too.
It could again, as it has in gubernatorial elections, come down to the Neighbor Islands to decide this one, too. That is if the measure gets out of committee at next month Hawai'i Interscholastic Athletic Directors Association meetings, where the crossfire has doomed a number of proposals.
It would be a shame if, after all the years that have passed, this opportunity for a two-tier playoff becomes another victim of the feud.
