Instant replay review for the football state tournament is well on its way to becoming a reality.
A proposal to incorporate replay for televised football state tournament games at Aloha Stadium passed through a Hawaii Interscholastic Athletic Directors Association committee 33-0-4 Wednesday at the annual legislative meeting at the Kauai Marriott Resort.
There are two more hurdles — Thursday morning’s general assembly vote and then a vote by the Hawaii High School Athletic Association executive board Thursday evening.
Three other measures concerning state football passed through committee Wednesday, including a plan to exempt football from normal state tourney seeding procedures. If the proposal, which got through committee 26-11, gets final approval Thursday, teams from leagues with only two representatives (for instance ‘Iolani and Damien in ILH Division I) would now be allowed to be seeded.
The two other state football proposals that passed through committee are plans for either a 4-5-6 or a 4-5-5 format of Open, D-I and D-II state tournament fields. The current format is four teams in Open and D-I and six teams in D-II. Those two plans got through committee, 26-11-1 and 25-11.
Listed below are other committee-level items that passed, were defeated, were withdrawn or no motion was made, with voting numbers in parentheses.
PASSED THROUGH COMMITTEE:
>> Changing official timekeeping from the head referee to a scoreboard clock operator for state soccer tournament games played at Waipio Peninsula Soccer Stadium (33-0)
>> Eliminating qualifying standards from the track and field state championships and implementing a qualification system of the top 24 performers and four alternates from each event during the season. (28-0-3)
DEFEATED IN COMMITTEE:
>> Adding the MIL into the state soccer hosting rotation every fourth year. (12-19-2) Note: This measure will reach Thursday’s general assembly vote by virtue of a minority report.
>> Forming a committee to explore three-tier tournaments in other sports aside from football, including in girls sports to comply with the Title IX gender equity law. (11-18)
>> Adding softball and baseball to the D-I regional format mix. The regional format typically beings on Mondays on a different island than where the weekend finals will be held. (11-17-1)
PROPOSALS WITHDRAWN:
>> Adding a trials event for the 3,000-meter run at the state track and field championships.
>> Returning to a day of rest in between the state track and field trials and finals. Currently, the championships are held on consecutive days.
NO MOTIONS MADE:
>> Adding the regional format for all D-II 12-team state tournaments.
>> Changing the seeding criteria for state tournaments to give preference to undefeated or one-loss defending champions, undefeated state-runners-up, and teams’ ranks in media polls.
>> Putting the KIF into the D-II baseball hosting mix every third year instead of every six years.
“If the proposal, which got through committee 26-11, gets final approval Thursday, teams from leagues with only two representatives (for instance ‘Iolani and Damien in ILH Division I) would now be allowed to be seeded.”
By default I assume this means division that only has one team from a league will not get a seed, regardless of record? ILH only has one team in DII, which means they don’t get a seed. What is incentive to play that format for that team? If HHSSA can’t fix this then the league has to find a way to support that teams ability to at least have an opportunity for post season play.
@Observation
Seeding means seeding, not a spot in the state tournament.
For example, ILH had 2 teams each in D-I and D-II last year. No matter how well they did during the regular season, they could not get a home advantage in the 4-team D-I tournament by virtue of the seeding rule. In last year’s case, the MIL also only had 2 teams in D-I so the only possible seeds were Hilo, the BIIF champs, and Waipahu, the OIA champs.
Pac-Five will basically get a guaranteed spot in the D-II tournament (unless they alter it dramatically so that they have to play a play-in game), but not as a seed. If HHSAA sticks with the 6-team format from last year, they would play in the first round as an away team to either the #4 or #5 seed (#4 seed most likely).
I think Wainakea is right. The softball tournament had a similar situation. St. Francis was clearly the best D2 team in the state but they were not seeded for the state tournament because of ILH numbers game. No matter, St. Francis still got in the tournament and won it!
This is actually a good situation for Pac-5. They are basically a automatic qualifier for states. They will not get one of the valuable byes in the first round, but if they have a strong enough team, they can still win it.
@Wainakea
Sorry, you are misinformed, Pac5 by default and according to the OIA-ILH two-year agreement would not receive any seed in postseason play, regardless of their possible record. The agreement is very clear and that is exactly what was conveyed to the team. The only way they can get a possible seed in the post season play would be if there was another ILH team in DII, that is it.
The agreement states that there has to be at least one team representing from each league (i.e., ILH and OIA) to each division and that there has to be at least two team from each league to qualify for postseason play. Pac5 cannot even move up to DI because that would violate the agreement and while Kamehameha is willing to move from the Open D to DI, no team in DI is willing to move down to DII from the ILH.
Using the word “seeding” is causing confusion. Reading other articles both from Star-Advertiser and ScoringLive, it’s seems leagues with only one team in a division will not be allowed to play in postseason tournaments.
“…a league must have more than one team in a division to be able to qualify for the state tournament.”
That’s pretty clear to me. Pac-5(and other schools in other sports who might be in the same situation) needs to be given more options, otherwise, what’s the point? It would be like they’re on NCAA probation simply for not wanting to move up to a division where they’d be clearly outclassed in their respective sport.