At a meeting in the morning at the Maui Community School for Adults, the ADs recommended the proposal for the principals to consider in the joint afternoon meeting. The proposal was approved by the principals, meaning all basketball in the MIL will be played in the wintertime in the 2007-08 season.

That will put a premium on gym space for practice for four teams per school in most cases in the MIL. It will also put the squeeze on officials.

The Hawai'i High School Athletic Association executive board voted earlier this month to move boys volleyball from the fall to the spring, softball from winter to spring and girls basketball from spring to winter.

"Trying to figure out the scheduling stuff was the main thing today,'' MIL Executive Director Stephen Kim said to The Maui News. "We are going to keep JV (basketball) with the varsity. It is going to be real tough. It is going to be schools practicing from early in the morning to late at night. Who practices when? Girls coming home late at night? Yeah, it is going to be a big problem.

"The biggest problem is going to be where do we get the officials from? Do we go back down to two officials per game from three, stuff like that.''

The Interscholastic League of Honolulu and O'ahu Interscholastic Association have not made a decision on when JV basketball will be played next season.

Kurtis Saiki, the King Kekaulike AD and MIL basketball coordinator for boys and girls, said several options have been discussed for scheduling of the sport. Some of them include playing boys and girls games on the same nights between the same schools, with one school's gym serving as the site for the boys games and the other the site of the girls games. The same thing could be done with JV games for both at one school and the varsity games between the same two schools at the other gym.

"Our philosophy is not to hurt one sport in terms of the other,'' Saiki said.

Saiki will meet with girls coaches tonight and with MIL officials sometime next week to discuss the myriad scheduling hurdles.

"Obviously facilities to practice is a big challenge,'' Saiki said. "Here in Hawai'i most schools have only one gym and some don't have any, so that is going to be a real problem in terms of facilities. The second problem is officials. That is a big issue. Right now we have boys coaches officiating girls games and girls coaches officiating boys games. Because the two seasons are now the same, we are not going to have those folks and we are already short of officials to begin with. We are doubling the amount of games and we have less officials.''

Saiki said the scheduling issues will become more clear when the state announces dates for state tournaments. The state tournaments could be played the same week or be separated by one week.