On the first day of April, Kenny Johnson, coach of the Waianae Tigers football team, arrived at Maili Community Park before 5 a.m.
The sports field permit office would not allow people in for a few more hours. But Johnson knew there would be fierce competition to get monthly field permits for his youth team in Waianae.
“I put a chair by the door” to take his place, he said. So he went back to the car and waited.
Johnson does this ritual most months to secure precious practice space for his team. Additionally, he attends twice-a-year sports council meetings with eight other football teams as they discuss how to allocate practice areas along the Waianae coast.
Although the number of sports fields on Oahu is stagnant, demand for permits is high and continues to rise. Sports leagues continue to emerge and others are turning into year-round activities. Adult leagues also compete for the same patches of grass.
Coaches say it’s a good thing to have so many kids playing sports. But it’s still a problem, especially since many parks are behind on maintenance.
A growing number of teams
The problem goes beyond the West Side.
Kawehi Kamalamalama, president of the Kailua Mustangs football and cheerleading team, raised the issue at Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s Kailua town hall in March. And Pearl City lawmakers Sen. Brandon Elefante and Rep. Gregg Takayama introduced resolutions this year calling on the Department of Education to allow the public to use its facilities outside of school hours. Both resolutions died.
One reason for the growing demand for camps is that many parents hope their children can get athletic scholarships to offset the high cost of college. Decades ago, they might have signed their kids up for football only during the fall. But year-round sports offer an opportunity to gain a competitive edge.
Now, football has a fall and spring season, increasing the number of teams wanting to use the fields. It’s a national trend.
The parks try to include as many teams as they can. The city tries to allow different sports on sections of the same field, for example, allowing baseball to be played at the same time as football.
“It’s almost becoming military planning precision about how you allocate this resource to as many people as possible,” said Parks and Recreation Department Director Laura Thielen.
‘Everyone always asks for as much as they can get’
Johnson said the Waianae Tigers, made up of several age groups of flag football and tackle football teams, have licenses for different fields on different days.
Maili Kai Community Park, where Johnson got a monthly permit for a tackle team on Mondays, is sunny and warm. Holes in the ground make running dangerous.
Johnson has players warm up in an area without as many holes and mainly uses Mondays to run through plays for Saturday games, he said.
“The ideal is the main field, which is Pililaau,” Johnson said.
Pililaau Community Park is much darker than Maili Community Park. It also has lights, unlike the Waianae Boat Harbor, another practice facility for Johnson’s Waianae Tigers.
Team Blessed Athletics, another major soccer organization in Waianae, secured permits for Pililaau Community Park four days a week during the December sports council meeting to assign permits for the spring season.
Field allocation methods vary by region.
In the case of Costa Waianae, priority goes to teams with the most players.
At Team Blessed Athletics, these players are spread across four tackle teams, about 15 flag teams and a pylon team for boys and one for girls, said team president Kuna Kaio. Pylon football is a newer, faster-paced variant with fewer players on the field at the same time.
All of these players mean that Team Blessed Athletics has taken priority this season.
Sports council meetings can be stressful as each coach searches for the best fields for their children.
During the December football meet, Waianae teams drew cards from a deck to determine their order. Team Blessed Athletics got two picks per round instead of one because they have so many players, Kaio said. Used the choices to apply for permits for Pililaau Community Park.
With a limited number of spots at good camps, “everyone always asks for as much as they can get,” Thielen said.
Sometimes teams try to increase their chances by saying they have more players than they actually do, Thielen said, so the department requests rosters.
Teams can report other teams that reserve fields but never use them, Thielen said. Violators have to face their peers at the in-person sports council, which takes place twice a year. For that reason, Thielen said, the department wants athletic council meetings to remain in-person, even though its scheduling system is online.
Park Quality
Johnson said it’s not just the number of fields, but the quality.
“If we had all the fields similar to Pililaau, there would be no problems,” he said.
But many of Honolulu’s parks, especially on the West Side, are in disrepair. They often lack shade and the grass dries up and turns to dirt during the summer. Many do not have lights that allow nighttime practices.
The Honolulu City Council adopted a resolution in April asking the Department of Parks and Recreation to request the use of state Department of Education facilities, “particularly in park districts where the demand for field space exceeds the availability of recreational facilities. Honolulu.”
DOE spokeswoman Nanea Kalani said principals are responsible for approving requests to use school facilities and that a procedure already exists for the city to make such requests.
But Thielen said she would like the DOE to encourage principals to help, a request she recently made to Superintendent Keith Hayashi.
