The final piece of the 2013 Big Island Interscholastic Federation football schedule was finalized Tuesday when the league’s athletic directors voted on its postseason format.
All eight teams will play in a semifinal game. Teams will be seeded by their place in the standings in each division. The top team in each division will host the team with the worst record. The divisional runner-up will host the third place team. Both winners will move on to the league championship game, hosted by the highest seeded team.
Both Division I semifinals will be played on Friday, Oct. 18. The Division II semifinals will be played the next day.
The league championship games will be played on Friday, Nov. 1 and Saturday, Nov. 2. It will not be known which game will be played on each night until the completion of the semifinal games, based on hosting responsibilities for schools that only play daytime games.
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The league waited a few extra days to finalize the playoff schedule to consider several factors. One of the main ones is a conflict with the New City Nissan / Hawai`i High School Athletic Association Division I Volleyball Championships, held at Kamehameha-Hawai`i and Kea`au High Schools that week. The championship game of the tournament will be played on the same night as the first football championship game.
Athletic directors voted to keep the football championship games where they were originally scheduled, largely in part to protect home field advantage for its football games and the revenue that it generated for the league.
The playoff format change follows last week’s entire regular season schedule revision by the league. This followed the announcements by Kohala and Ka`u High Schools that their schools would not compete in league competition because of low turnout.
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That decision dropped the number of regular season games for each school from nine to seven, prompting the addition of the semifinal contests. Previously, only the top two teams in each division would have advanced to the playoff format.
The First Hawaiian Bank / HHSAA Football Championships kick off on Friday, Nov. 8.
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