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Monday
Evening QB
IF you don't believe that the time for classification of high school football has arrived, read this: Here’s some
classified informationSt. Louis 65, Pac-Five 0.
OK, that's mild when compared to the 82-0 score the Crusaders put on Damien's Monarchs, or the 89-7 pasting the perennial Prep Bowl and state champs dropped on the Wolfpack last fall.
But Saturday's score might have been 100-0 without running time for more than a half.
Nobody likes the fact that the mercy rule is necessary, but everyone at Aloha Stadium was thankful for it in this case.
One can't help thinking how much things have changed since the glory years of Joe Onosai and, later, Garrett Gabriel.
In the 1980s when Don Botelho's team won two Prep Bowls, they used to talk about breaking up the 'Pack. Some folks felt that Pac-Five had an unfair advantage because it drew players from seven or eight Interscholastic League of Honolulu schools too small to field teams of their own.
Today, the Wolfpack is the poster team for the mercy rule.
It's not that Pac-Five and Damien lack talent -- they just aren't deep enough to handle poundings from St. Louis and Kamehameha with their 100-player rosters stocked with future Division I college players.
The rumor is that Saturday's game almost didn't happen, that too many of Pac-Five's 48 players were banged up beyond being able to participate. It doesn't help that the Wolfpack is forced to play sophomores who aren't ready for varsity because the ILH has no junior varsity schedule again.
The answer is not limiting participation to 65 or some other randomly chosen number of players.
The solution lies in letting Pac-Five and Damien play against teams they can compete with -- teams like Waialua, Kalani and Moanalua.
And instead of the Wolfpack and the Monarchs, St. Louis and Kamehameha can pick on someone their own size, like Kahuku and Waianae. Crusader coach Cal Lee says he's all for that.
The cynics say it will never happen, that the reasons the public schools broke apart from the private schools in 1970 still exist (the biggest being recruiting).
Well, if they're right, how long will Pac-Five and Damien, and maybe Iolani, want to keep absorbing the beatings in the ILH?
Hawaii High School Athletic Association executive director Keith Amemiya presented a proposal for classification early this year, but it didn't get far.
Opponents cite the cost of putting on two state tournaments, but Amemiya says additional expenses would be minimal, and with better matchups there would be more gate receipts.
Paul Honda, sportswriter for the Hawaii Sports Network, proposes a three-level Oahu setup, similar to the Oahu Interscholastic Association's former Red, White and Blue scheme. The numbers work, since there are 27 Oahu teams -- nine-team leagues, eight-game regular schedules.
THERE's a quarterback at Harvard right now named Neil Rose. He set a passing record for the Crimson on Saturday.
Rose is an outstanding student who might have found his way to the Ivy League without football. But it probably helped.
Rose also set records while quarterbacking in high school -- for Pac-Five.
That should be reason enough to start thinking of ways to save the 'Pack and other small teams.
The mercy rule keeps scores under a hundred and some kids off the injured list.
But in the big picture, it's a Band-Aid on a sucking chest wound.
Dave Reardon, who covered sports in Hawaii from 1977 to 1998,
moved to the the Gainesville Sun, then returned to
the Star-Bulletin in Jan. 2000.
E-mail dreardon@starbulletin.com