Also, two schools appear ready to add baseball to their sports programs in the next two seasons.

Ka'ahumanu Hou Christian School, which played baseball for 10 seasons before dropping the sport three years ago, is on the league's 2008 schedule.

Scott Soldwisch, the Maui High School athletic director and the MIL baseball coordinator, told The Maui News that Lana'i is also contemplating joining the league's baseball ranks in 2009.

Lana'i, which joined the MIL in 1984, played baseball in the league until dropping the sport in 1992.

The addition of Ka'ahumanu Hou brings the number of MIL baseball teams to 10 — five in Division I and five in Division II. The sport finalized the addition of Division II statewide on Tuesday, meaning that there will be two 12-team state tournaments held on O'ahu next year. The Division I tournament will be played at Les Murakami Stadium, while the Division II tournament will be played at Central O'ahu Regional Park and Les Murakami Stadium.

Based on the HHSAA formula for state representation, the MIL will most likely have two teams in each of the state baseball tournaments.

MIL baseball teams will play division opponents two times each, while facing nondivision foes once for a total of 13 regular-season games. There will also be league tournaments in both divisions.

With boys volleyball moving from the fall to the spring, there were doubts about the viability of baseball teams in Hana and Moloka'i — both schools that have successful boys volleyball teams. Hana's boys volleyball team was state Division II runner-up in 2006.

"We are hopeful that the numbers will remain at five in both divisions,'' Soldwisch said, adding that is how he drew up the schedule discussed yesterday.

St. Anthony, which won its first MIL baseball pennant in 29 years in 2007, returns all 18 players on its championship roster for next season. The Trojans will be in Division II, along with Ka'ahumanu Hou, Moloka'i, Hana and Seabury Hall.

Division I is Baldwin, Maui High, Lahainaluna, King Kekaulike and Kamehameha Maui. MIL teams are classified based on school enrollment.

The baseball schedule will include 13 regular-season games in six weeks, forcing every school to play at least one three-game week.

"It is really tough considering we wanted to leave Mondays and Tuesday open for rainouts, so it is a Wednesday-through-Saturday schedule and that is a lot games to fit into a short amount of time considering the other options and the D-II teams still wanted to play the D-I's,'' Soldwisch said.

Moloka'i AD Bob Takeo said his school plans on playing baseball — the Farmers won back-to-back state titles in 1999 and 2000 — even with the move of boys volleyball to the spring. Two returning athletes — Kaden Tabil, a second-team MIL All-Star pitcher in 2007, and Jireh Torres-Umi — played both sports last year.

The other sports to change seasons are softball from the winter to the spring and girls basketball from the spring to the winter.

Soldwisch said the league's ADs are working together to keep all existing teams alive — specifically Hana and Moloka'i will get help in avoiding conflicts between baseball and boys volleyball — and all of the ADs said that all of their teams survived the initial examination.

"With all the schools we are trying to work together to keep all the programs alive,'' Soldwisch said.

Hana AD Rich Young said that boys volleyball and baseball will share "three or four athletes, but that should push us into the teens for each sport. We should be OK on the girls end. With the creative scheduling we did these last two days we are going to be fine.''