Official practices for football, girls volleyball, cross country, bowling and air riflery begin Monday at public high school fields and gyms across Hawai'i, but along with the excitement and anticipation of the new season comes the harsh realities of the state's budget crisis.

At minimum, the way athletes travel to games will be very different from years past.

According to the latest figures released by the O'ahu Interscholastic Association yesterday, public school athletic departments can expect to operate their programs with less than 65 percent of the money they were allocated for 2008-09.

The budget crunch affects supplies and equipment (57.2 percent cut), transportation (55.6 percent) and paid coaching positions (29.6 percent).

OIA executive director Dwight Toyama told The Advertiser yesterday none of his member schools have immediate plans to drop any sports, but the reduction in coaches and transportation funds could affect participation.

If, for example, a sport is left with only one coach to supervise 40 athletes, an athletic director might decide for safety reasons to suggest cutting the roster to a more manageable number, such as 30 or 25. Some ADs already have told their coaches to limit the number of bus rentals.

"We're going to go with only one bus for football, and the biggest bus only holds 60 (people)," said Mililani athletic director Glenn Nitta, whose football program has had up to 80 or more players in recent years. "There's going to be a 'traveling squad' (similar to college teams)."

OIA athletic directors will hold an emergency meeting tomorrow to share and brainstorm cost-cutting ideas, but some already have been implemented.

For example, air riflery teams will no longer travel to other sites for competition, instead recording their scores on their own campus and then comparing them to opponents on paper.

The ADs at Farrington and Kaimuki plan to eliminate bus transportation for preseason and Saturday regular-season games, and Farrington athletic director Harold Tanaka said his teams may not use buses for games at McKinley, Roosevelt, Kaimuki and Moanalua.

"We used to spend $30,000 on transportation, but now we'll have less than $10,000," Kaimuki athletic director Fred Lee said. "We had our coaches' meeting (Tuesday), and our coaches know this is our situation."

The situation is even worse than what was expected even after the Board of Education approved budget cuts to athletics in September 2008 and again earlier this month. According to those mandates, public schools were supposed to receive a total allocation of $3.4 million for coaches' stipends, but 15 percent of that money has been withheld pending an August report by the state's Council on Revenues and the result of negotiations between Gov. Linda Lingle and state worker unions.

Nitta, the Mililani AD, already had delivered bad news to his coaches at a Monday meeting, but that was based on previous numbers. Now, Nitta said, the cuts will be even deeper.

"Originally, I thought we would lose 17 percent (in coaches' stipends) but now it's close to 30 (percent)," said Nitta, whose program includes close to 950 athletes on 49 varsity and JV teams. "It's gonna be rough."

Lee said his plan was to keep at least two coaches for every sport, "just in case something happens to the head coach." But with these updated cuts, that may not be possible.

"Now, I don't know ... ," Lee said. "Certain sports might have only one (coach)."

Toyama said most ADs hoped to avoid cutting any sports, but he instructed them to work with the updated numbers and not count on receiving the balance from the withheld funds.

"I told them to plan (using) the numbers we already see," said Toyama, who is the Department of Education's liaison for all public school athletic programs. "So far it looks like everybody will be able to get by without dropping sports; I think they can do it."

But, as Nitta, Lee and Tanaka echoed, "it's gonna be rough."