The longest state tournament game in Hawaii football history will likely remain in the top spot for the foreseeable future, thanks to a new overtime rule for high school football adopted this week at the Hawaii Interscholastic Athletic Directors Association conference at the Hilton Waikoloa Village.
With the new rule — which passed by a unanimous vote — teams are now forced to go for a two-point conversion after the second overtime period, eliminating the chance for an extra point kick. Teams will still follow the college-style format, lining up at the 20-yard line to begin each OT period.
The rule comes after BIIF champion Konawaena battled Lahainaluna in a seven-OT Division II championship game, which the Lunas eventually won 75-69.
Konawaena head coach Brad Uemoto understands why the new rule was passed, but saw it as a bit of overreaction to an uncommon circumstance. The marathon match between two outerisland squads was the first title tilt to need extra time since division classification began in 2003.
“Historically, how often do games go that far,” Uemoto said. “The chances of it happening again are pretty low.”
Some stellar specialists also helped push the more than four-hour affair along. Konawaena’s Harry Hill and Lahainaluna’s Pablo Rico combined to go 10-for-10 on PATs in the overtime period, while also trading a pair of field goals.
As the game advanced to uncharted territory, there were whispers in Aloha Stadium wondering when the teams would be forced to go for two. That moment obviously never came, but Uemoto — a football junkie, who once used the little-known fair-catch kick rule in a BIIF game — knew all along that his team would be kicking as long as they scored touchdowns.
“At the high school level, it’s rare to have two teams with good kicking games,” Uemoto said. “We took the points. For those guys it was almost automatic.”
With the lower chance of games being extended, it’s also less likely that the three-tiered state championships — which were held this year as a triple-header — will become a logistical nightmare. The Open Division title game between Kahuku and Saint Louis ended at 1 a.m. the next day.
HIADA is an organization for athletic administrators who represent high schools that are members of the Hawaii High School Athletic Association. There are nearly 100 member schools from the BIIF, ILH, KIF, MIL and the OIA represented at the annual conference, which celebrated its 58th year.
Of the 45 HIADA measures discussed, 17 received HHSAA board approval.
Some of the defeated items were:
• Adding Division II boys and girls races at the cross country state meet.
• Adding a non-championship race at the cross country state meet, giving runners who don’t qualify for the big race one more chance to compete.
• Reducing the shot clock in girls water polo from 35 to 30 seconds in an effort to fall in line with the National Federation of High Schools guideline.
• Adding the 4×800 relay to the track and field state meet.
• Allowing the seventh- and eighth-place medalists to earn team points at the track and field state meet.
• Adding a rest day in between the trials and finals at the track and field state meet, which is called for in National Federation of State High School Associations guidelines
• Determining state tournament seeds in all sports on a rotational basis by league rather than by a committee
• Holding the boys soccer D-I states on Maui in 2020 and the girls soccer D-I states there in 2021.
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser contributed to this report