Logan Mew, Wyatt Coke
STAFF WRITERS
For the first time in almost 40 years, the schools of the Oahu Interscholastic Association (OIA) and the Interscholastic League of Honolulu (ILH) have made the historic decision to merge their 2018-2019 high school football league schedules. The OIA-ILH interleague is a Hawaii High School Athletics Association (HHSAA) state tournament concept. Where everything started was a league concept of three tiers. For many years, the HHSAA been trying to pass a three tier football, three divisions in the OIA league. And this past year, the interleague finally got that passed. “Now that we have three tiers in our league...how do we create a schedule for the top tier in our league?” stated Moanalua High School athletic director Joel Kawachi. “There were many options, and one of the options was to play games with the ILH... The state always had three tiers for a long time, but our OIA league didn’t have three tiers [for football]. We had to do that to our league first.” According to principal Robin Martin, the athletic directors and principals of both OIA and ILH schools voted on the decision to create the football OIA - ILH alliance in June 2017. Ms. Martin and Mr. Kawachi were a few of the many people that voted to pass the interleague.
“I would say most of the principals voted [in favor of the interleague] mostly based on safety reasons.” said Martin. “When a larger team plays a smaller one, often the school with the smaller football program suffers more injuries due to the fact that they have to play much longer than their opponents [who can substitute their players out throughout the course of a game]. I myself voted for that for safety reasons.” Mr. Kawachi adds, “The public seems to like it, the media really enjoys it, there’s benefits to our league financially. Competition is also more balanced [from a competitive standpoint].”
The decision was generally received well, not only by administration, but also members of the athletic department.
Savai’i Eselu, head coach of Moanalua High School’s varsity football team states that the alliance does affect the team greatly, but more so in the team’s benefit. He explained that the players do not need to run as much trick plays or have to be as concerned about clock management.
Now, the team can just play against an equal level of competition. is allows players on both offensive and defensive ends of the team to have a different approach on the prepping, planning, and execution of their duties on the eld.
Despite the new interleague schedule, senior offensive line starter Kaiea Kihune believes that the new competition does not affect the team’s performance. “We just have to train hard as we always do. I’m not sure [how different it is playing ILH schools], but we don’t care. They are going to find out what Moanalua football is about” said Kihune. The OIA-ILH interleague is a pilot program for the next two seasons. By the end of the 2019 football season, the HHSAA will evaluate to see whether or not the program is a success.
“Whether [or not] it’s competition/competitive balance, whether it’s revenue, whether it’s fan support, a lot of people are going to define success differently. So we’re going to have to weigh all those things when making the decision with our principals if this is going to continue in the future” states Mr. Kawachi. The homecoming game is set for September 21, at 7:30 pm at the Moanalua High School football field against Damien Memorial School.