Give credit to Chris Chun, the executive director of the Hawaii High School Athletic Association, and the committee of athletic directors who oversaw the regional pilot program used in the most recent girls basketball and boys volleyball state tournaments.

Thanks to their forward thinking, prep sports fans on Maui and the Big Island will continue to have the chance to attend state tournament games without having to fly to Oahu after the issue was revisited recently. The committee met well before last week's Hawaii Interscholastic Athletic Directors Association annual conference to iron out its recommendation for HIADA consideration.

Among the details:
-Tournaments will be on two consecutive weekends; the first weekend will have two regional sites (one on Oahu, the other on Maui or the Big Island) and the second weekend will include semifinals and finals on Oahu.
-Each regional will have six teams; two first-round games will be played Friday and two quarterfinals Saturday at each site; seeded teams have a first-round bye.
-The league champions from the OIA and ILH will be placed in the Oahu regional; the BIIF and MIL champs will be in the neighbor island regional.
-This format will be applied to the Division I boys and girls state tournaments for soccer and volleyball for the 2014-'15 season.
-The BIIF will host regionals for girls soccer and boys volleyball next year; the MIL will host boys soccer and girls volleyball regionals. The tournaments will alternate between leagues yearly.

The proposal breezed through the three-day conference, except for a 90-minute committee session Friday (Group 4 also had about a dozen other concerns to address, however). It barely made it to the general assembly floor after a tight 23-22-1 vote Saturday, but was voted through a day later 64-31-4. The HHSAA Executive Board made it official by approving the HIADA recommendation Monday morning.

The first look at the new double-regional format will be at the D1 girls volleyball tournament in late October. The exact venues will be announced by the host leagues later. I would expect either McKinley's Student Council Gym or Kamehameha's Kunuiakea Gym will play host to the Oahu regional and either Kamehameha-Maui's Ka’ulaheanuiokamoku Gym or King Kekaulike to host the Maui regional.

The interesting twist to this one was the addition of boys and girls soccer and consequently the subtraction of girls basketball. While the D1 girls basketball regional final at the Lahaina Civic Center drew well (approx. 1500 for Maryknoll-Lahainaluna), another at Kealakehe High School didn't (approx. 230 for Mililani-Konawaena). Did that play into the committee's decision to exclude girls basketball? Possibly, but I think the format is better suited for soccer anyway. Unseeded teams in the state soccer tournaments must win four games in as many days — a brutal test of depth and more importantly, conditioning. As some athletic directors told me, it doesn't always equate to the best quality of play. With teams now playing a maximum of two games a week, we should see less injuries due to fatigue and sharper execution.

Administrators did good this time, pointing to the fact that student-athletes will miss far less class time with the two-week format. It's common for teams to fly out Tuesday and return on Sunday for a Wednesday-through-Saturday state tournament. However, they'll now miss one, at most two, days of school for the entire tournament.

Ultimately, however, the HHSAA and the five leagues statewide have to do what it takes to stay afloat and that sometimes means following the money. If this doesn't work, however, don't blame them. Chun and the committee have shown flexibility and out-of-the-box thinking to bring the "state-tournament experience" to fans statewide.

Now it's up to those fans to turn out and support high school sports.