Prep soccer tourney
moved for a concert

Sending the girls from Aloha Stadium
to Maui irks coaches and parents

By Pat Bigold
Star-Bulletin

Tom Moffatt Productions has paid $25,000 to move the state high school girls' soccer tournament out of Aloha Stadium for the Mariah Carey concert on Feb. 21.

But the Hawaii High School Athletic Association, which negotiated the hefty buyout fee last October, decided only yesterday to share some of that money with tournament participants, who are furious about having to relocate to Maui.

Not only are coaches worried about how they will find time to raise money to take their players to Maui, but parents are angry because they might not be able to attend on such short notice.

The girls will play Feb. 18-21 at War Memorial Stadium, site of this weekend's Hooters Hula Bowl.

The boys' tournament will be Feb. 11-14 at Aloha Stadium.

Moffatt said the amount of time needed to erect and tear down the Carey show staging would consume much of the week, which is why he asked that the entire girls' tournament be moved.

The last 13 girls' tournaments have been held on Oahu.

Former HHSAA executive director Dwight Toyama said he had no alternative but to look to the Maui facility to satisfy gender equity concerns.

"We had to have a site comparable to Aloha Stadium for the girls," he said. "If we put girls in a high school site, we would get killed on that."

To this, Kaiser High School parent Diane Wong remarked, "Yes, but the girls have to pay to get to their tournament, while the boys don't."

Toyama said he received positive comments from some coaches about the move to the grass surface on Maui.

But complaints from coaches, parents and legislators led the HHSAA executive board to reverse a decision made Monday not to use any of the Moffatt settlement check to relieve the financial burden of the schools affected.

The $25,000 is five times the value of last year's Outrigger Hotels sponsorship of the tournament.

The HHSAA executive board, made up of principals representing the five leagues, agreed in a round of telephone conferences that the HHSAA would give $10,000 to the 10 affected schools in the Oahu Interscholastic Association, the Interscholastic League of Honolulu, the Big Island Interscholastic Federation, and the Kauai Interscholastic Federation.

But even with the additional $1,320 subsidy OIA schools get from their league, the teams could fall as much as $3,000 short of what they need to travel.

"So what happens to the other $15,000 (of the $25,000 Moffatt payment)?" asked Archie Chung, 12th-

year head coach of the defending state champion Pearl City girls' soccer team.

"They should think in terms of this being for the kids and just the kids," he said, adding that he's certain the Maui trip will cost his program more than double what the HHSAA and OIA will offer.

He said he took his team of 25 players to a Maui tournament last month. That two-day trip cost more than $2,000, even though the girls slept on the floor of the Maui High gym.

He said parents had to provide each girl with $50 for meals, and that usually comes down to "fast food."

Chung said that if he had known that he would have to go back to Maui next month, he would not have taken the preseason trip.

Toyama, who now heads the OIA, says the HHSAA is going a long way to try to accommodate the schools involved.

"What the HHSAA is giving the schools for this tournament is way beyond anything the association has ever given before for off-island travel," he said.

He said tournaments have been moved in the past without such a subsidy, and he's worried that future moves might entail requests for similar money.

Toyama said he doesn't know what the HHSAA's expenses will be at War Memorial and doesn't expect to match last year's net of $10,000 in gate receipts and souvenir sales.

He said he originally planned to use all of the $25,000 to bolster nonrevenue tournaments, and pay for coaches' clinics, workshops and drug education programs.

Barbara Ann Halberg, general manager for Tom Moffatt Productions, said she assumed that the fee Toyama negotiated with her would be used substantially to pay for players' air fare, hotel and other costs.

"We never really talked about line-item specifics," she said, noting that the $25,000 fee was about average for moving an event.

Anthony Ramos, HHSAA president from Kamehameha Schools, said he hopes to arrange for breaks on hotel accommodations and is leaving the door open to further discussion about how much the HHSAA should subsidize affected schools.

Coaches say it will be very difficult to raise any cash this close to tournament time.

"It will be hard to raise X amount of money right now," said Kahuku athletic director Hartwell Lee Loy.

"I tell all my coaches that if you expect to go to a state tournament off island, to start fund-raising early in the year," he said.

Lee Loy and all of the coaches contacted by the Star-Bulletin said they only found out recently that the tournament would be moved. And they say they knew nothing about a $25,000 settlement to move the event.

But Toyama insists that he had warned the HHSAA executive board as well as a meeting of OIA athletic directors and principals in October that the tournament could be displaced by a concert.

He said references can be found in the minutes of meetings held that month.

Ramos echoed that sentiment, saying that's why his HHSAA executive board shot down an original proposal submitted by ILH executive secretary Clay Benham to share the Moffatt payment with the affected schools.

But Kaiser head coach Carl Izumi, as well as Chung and Mililani coach James Uson, claim that they only found out within the past several days.

"My A.D. (John Kauinana) just got a fax two days ago," said Uson on Tuesday.

"There were rumors going around and I asked my A.D., but he said nothing had changed. In fact, I talked to the Leilehua coach and he said his A.D. didn't know."