When the Hawai'i State High School Athletic Association girls basketball tournaments end May 18, so, too, will an era.

No longer will girls basketball be a season apart from that of the boys on the high school level. Both will play in the traditional season of winter. Softball and boys volleyball will also find their in-season balance.

And with the changes will go the distinction of being a lone, desperate holdout among the state associations on this particular frontier of athletic and educational equality. Not exactly a 50th State attribute to be clung to at all costs in this day and age.

The decision by the HHSAA Executive Board to bring its boys and girls seasons in line a year earlier than had been previously announced was the appropriate one. Overdue to be sure, but ultimately right, too.

The prevailing opinion will be that it was largely a product of expedience. That even some longtime foes of Title IX reluctantly saw it as necessary after assessing the heavy cost in money, time and public relations sure to come from no-win litigation now that the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed its resolve on the issue.

And be assured the handwriting was on the wall. A suit was just around the corner had foot dragging persisted much longer. We're told potential litigants to challenge the HHSAA policy were being lined up and screened. Having seen what the Michigan High School Athletic Association, the penultimate holdout, went through in terms of time, money and public relations expended, it was a change that had to be made when separate but equal was less of the latter. A no-brainer.

But you'd also like to think — and hope — that somewhere in this long and often convoluted process that another truth also gradually emerged and took hold with us all. This one being that, above everything else, doing the equitable sooner rather than later was simply the right thing to do.

Implementing it not in 2008-09, as the HHSAA had grudgingly resigned itself to just two weeks ago, but moving at a more expeditious pace as officials have come to recognize. That after putting the issue of season realignment on the back burner, studying it and debating it for years and hoping it would go away, it was past time to get on with it.

For all the deliberations and continued hand-wringing, the much hoped for easy, painless solution never emerged. There was no seamless way around the problems of lining up facilities, finding coaches, referees and a dozen other headaches. The folks involved will be wrestling with this one for a while.

Those who interpret the law had long since made it clear that none of that mattered, of course. Equality was the bottom line, no ifs ands or buts.

Yesterday's action says that message has been received, loud and clear.

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