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Inaugural HHSAA Student Leadership Summit a success




WAIKOLOA, Hawaii — While athletic directors from across the state converged on the grounds of the Hilton Waikoloa Village Tuesday afternoon for the 56th Annual Hawaii Interscholastic Athletic Directors Association Conference, the next generation of decision-makers wrapped up a few days of work themselves.

The inaugural Hawaii High School Athletic Association Student Leadership Summit was held over two days at the 62-acre, oceanfront resort with 83 participating student-athletes from all five of the state's interscholastic athletic leagues.

Monday's opening day of the summit included three hour-long speaker sessions and other workshops. Attendees also took part in a community service project Tuesday morning where they worked to beautify the traditional Polynesian sailing vessel, the Makalii, at nearby Kawaihae boat harbor.

"I think it was a really good idea to get these students involved," said Hawaii Baptist Academy athletic director Deren Oshiro, who led one of Monday's sessions on using social media responsibly.

"It was a packed itinerary from the workshops to the speakers and the community service, so they might have had half-an-hour, an hour of downtime, but otherwise they were busy," Oshiro said. "Hopefully they can take some of the things they learned back to their schools and their leagues to better their individual programs. I think it's a wonderful idea and I hope it's something that they can continue to do."

The summit is just the latest venture for the HHSAA, which formulated a Student Advisory Committee (SAC) a few years ago. The SAC includes 10 student-athletes — two from each from the OIA, ILH, BIIF, MIL and KIF.

"Last July we took five of those kids — one from each league — to the National Federation (of High Schools) conference in Indianapolis and from the kids' experience there it kind of led to the formation of this," said HIADA president Georges Gilbert.

"Besides attending the conference, the kids got tours of Purdue University, Butler University, they got private tours of the Colts facility, the Pacers facility, so they really got a first-class experience in so many different ways," Gilbert said.

The SAC meets quarterly with HHSAA president Elden Esmeralda and late last year they hinted at the possibility of a Student Leadership Summit.

"Elden has been mentoring them and when this came up, I think he saw the passion in the kids and they made such a huge impact at the national conference that I think, eventually everybody kind of got on board," Gilbert said.

This week's summit came at a cost of about $300 per student-athlete, which included airfare, ground transportation, hotel and meals, but Gilbert noted that much of the overhead costs were covered through donations and sponsors.

Among the participants was Iolani senior-to-be Hugh Hogland, the reigning All-Hawaii Division I Player of the Year in boys basketball.

"I was really impressed with how student-led it was," Hogland said. "There's kids from different leagues and schools all coming together and the HHSAA SAC really wanted to make this happen so they made their voices known and to have all these athletes and future leaders come in for these two days at Waikoloa was a pretty neat experience. It's a cool teamwork thing we have here."

Perhaps the biggest proponent of the program is HHSAA executive director Chris Chun.

"I think it's the best thing we've done in seven years," Chun said. "From my perspective I enjoyed it, because this is one of the few times I get to interact with them — normally at the state tournament I don't get to interact too much with the students — so seeing their different perspective, seeing what they're getting out of it, seeing their willingness to put into it, it was totally beneficial."



Reach Kalani Takase at [email protected].




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