Unraveling the Traveling

Living in Hawaii is one of the best places in the world. Surrounded by environmental beauty, perfect weather, nice people, and great cross cultural experiences. However, we are isolated on a rock with ocean all around us. Traveling to and from each island does take on an added expense. Reality is, although we belong to one state, more than ocean separates us, we are separated by economics. The economies of scale work against this separation.

The HHSAA State Championships are becoming an economic burden for traveling teams. The culprit is higher fuel costs and lodging expenses. Everything is going up in cost. Recession is looming its ugly head. As more families face this economic crunch, traveling becomes a hardship.

What can the leagues do to alleviate this burden? A BIIF Boy's Volleyball DII team that just qualified for the HHSAA DII tournament is having difficulty coming up with funds to go to this tournament.

Each school is given some assistance by the HHSAA to go to the tournament, however the assistance is never nearly enough to cover every cost. Airfares have doubled since Aloha Airlines has gone out of business and seems to be going higher. Hotel and rental vans are harder to find and are expensive.

Each school's athletic department only has funds that operate the in season athletic programs and does not provide pre and post season traveling expenses. The athletic programs pretty much leaves this up to the parents of the teams traveling. Most teams have booster associations that fund raise to make up for this shortfall.

The problem exists due to the shortness of the season for most sports. Take for instance most seasons last only two months. Planning and fundraising must be done prior and after the season to have any kind of success. Most families are busy with club teams and other activities to do this.

It takes dedicated parents, a visionary booster board and a coach with leadership skills to pull this off. For smaller schools it just does not happen. Also most coaches today are busy with their real jobs and don't want to be bothered by fundraising. So what usually happens? Most families foot the bill. Now, it may seem like a minor expense for some families, but for those that are not as fortunate and live on a fixed budget it is a hardship.
So what can the Leagues and HHSAA do to make this better? Maybe better planning should be done.

1. The HHSAA should negotiate with Hawaiian Airlines or Go Airlines and reserve a big block of seats for the number of outer island teams that are slated to travel to the HHSAA tournaments. This would be reimbursed by traveling teams back to the HHSAA. By doing this you ensure you get the best price for seats rather than having teams scramble for expensive last minute seats.

2. The athletic programs should facilitate fundraising activities of each athletic program.
Come up with creative fundraising activities to assist assorted teams.

3. Business' like hotels and car rental companies need to look at creative ways to giving to this problem. Sometimes in a slumping economy, taking a tax deduction for donating to a cause like this is better than trying to increase sales. Maybe hotels and car rental companies could donate blocks of rooms and cars for HHSAA teams. If you have 10 hotels that donate just 4-5 rooms per tournament that is 50 rooms for the tournament. The HHSAA could hang the banners of those hotels at the tournament along with the major sponsor. Businesses would get a big tax deduction, the best advertising, and doing community service in one good swoop. In Hawaii we are in a unique situation, unlike mainland teams that can hop in a car and drive, we are at a big disadvantage. It is time for creative ways to unravel the travel dilemma.