Maybe you remember the TV commercial in which a grease-streaked mechanic holds up an oil filter and says the choice is yours: "you can pay me now (to change the filter) or pay me later (for more extensive and expensive work)."

When it came to gender equity in the case of some girls high school sports, Hawai'i chose the pay-later plan.

And, now, the bill is due. Overdue, actually.

That's why, with the Hawai'i High School Athletic Association executive board's decision this week to finally bring girls basketball into the traditional winter season and softball into spring with the boys, administrators are going to scramble to scrape up gym and field time for everybody in 2008-'09. It is why coaches and referees in both sports will be at a premium. And, why headaches will abound for people are already underpaid and overburdened.

It is going to be hectic aligning everything to assure gender equity. But in all the hand-wringing that has started and is sure to mount, one truth stands out: equality is the law. And, it has been for a generation since Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 — now known as the Patsy Mink Act, in honor of the late Congresswoman from Hawai'i — was enacted.

It has been upheld repeatedly by the Supreme Court and nine of the 13 federal circuits to have fielded cases. Everybody, it seems, up to and possibly including the justice of the peace in Pascagoula, Ms.

Hawai'i has been getting by on borrowed time for quite a while, its reckoning coming. So, when the Supremes refused to hear the Michigan High School Athletic Association's appeal earlier this month, it resonated here with a thunder of an NBA slam-dunk. It left Hawai'i as the only state yet to address boys and girls playing in the same seasons. The prospect of expensive litigation and penalties loomed.

As girls sports grew, Hawai'i did what most of us are inclined to do: take the easiest way out. Faced with a real shortage of gyms and fields, administrators for years have steered the path of least resistance. For the most part it wasn't an attempt to cheat girls but to do what was expedient. Indeed, the girls state basketball tournaments have grown into impressive affairs.

But the law does not grant exemptions for convenience. It does not pardon on expense or degree of difficulty. It mandates equality.

As the arduous task of reaching equality begins, let it be a lesson at UH or anyplace where folks might be inclined to take the pay-later approach.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.