Jerry Campany: Hawaii High School Athletic Association Hall of Honor paves way for gender equity

A few years ago, while covering preparations for this journal, I started pound-for-pound rankings for wrestling.

My original idea was to make this a straight Top 10 list, with boys and girls mixed and girls Teshya Alo from Kamehameha and Lalelei Mataafa from Lahainaluna in the top two spots above Best Male Wrestler. My reasoning was that Leilehua’s Liam Corbett had a better chance of losing than the two girls.

I tried and made separate lists, thinking if I had to take calls from angry parents, I might as well take twice as many. Nearly a decade later, the idea of ​​shuffling rosters doesn’t seem so scary.

The Hall of Honor selected its final class on Sunday, with the committee emerging from its lengthy meeting with a slate of 12 student-athletes despite the challenge of comparing spring sports kids who had a season past their freshman years with others who played in an extra season. Spring sports were canceled for two years due to COVID, while athletes in other seasons only lost their junior campaigns.

Choosing the Hall of Honor is not an easy task, but the committee almost succeeded. They are almost always right, even when I was there.

The interesting thing, for me, is that they elected seven girls and five boys in the class of 12, the second year in a row with more girls than boys. There was never a quota, that’s how it works.

There have been more girls than boys in previous years, most recently in 2011 and 2012, and in 2018 the breakdown was eight girls and just three boys.

When we look back on the beginnings of the Hall of Honor, we can see how much things have changed for the fairer sex. We’re not talking about the old days of Patsy Mink and Title IX, though that’s what led to those enlightened times. We’re talking about the early 1990s, which seems so far away but is just the blink of an eye.

The first Hall of Honor class included nine boys and three girls – Linda Jackson from Mililani, Pam Nihipali from Kahuku and Joy Purdy from Hana – and the gap grew from there. Three other girls did it in 1984 and only two did it in 1985.

These girls must have been pretty amazing to get into the boys club.

In 1991, volleyball star Dierdre Wisneski of Waimea was the only girl in the 12-person class and it wasn’t until 1995 (more than a decade after the program began) that girls got an equal share . We’ll call this the illumination of the Hall of Honor.

Three years later, the girls broke through. They won eight of the 12 seats at the table, the first time there were more women than men.

The U.S. women’s national soccer team recently got equal pay to its male counterparts, and Campbell’s female athletes have been in litigation for equal treatment, including their own locker room, since 2018.

But the Hall of Honor has long been ahead of its time. Despite the total absence of quotas, there have been the same number of girls as boys selected since 2001. Yes, the same number and that’s by chance.

One thing that worries me, and I’m not the only one, is that there were only two young people who wrote in three sports this year, and half the class is made up of specialists who don’t practiced only one sport. The seasons lost to the pandemic may have had an effect on that, but it’s been the trend for a decade. There have been as many sports specialists elected in the past 10 years (42) as in the previous 25 years.

It might just be a complaint from a guy from a different generation, but college coaches say they’re okay even though they probably wouldn’t sniff a kid who spent his precious time making passing drills rather than risk injury on a pole vault.

Moanalua’s Blaze Sumiye is one of those who gained three letters and it didn’t seem to hurt his wrestling game. He proved to be a passing passer in his only football season and the memories made there must count for something.

This year’s two outstanding wrestlers and judokas – Erin Hikiji of Mililani and Sumiye – were the only OIA representatives this year. It would be absurd to try to determine which is the better wrestler between the 98 pound girl and the 178 pound boy, wouldn’t it?

Yes, but not as absurd as not so long ago.