I'm a Sharks parent and one those that worked about 20 hours over the past two weekends so your kids could play (& my kid couldn't even play!). Just wanted to set the record straight on a few things.
First, the original ILH start date was November 30, 2009 when the tournament was originally scheduled. The date change to October 30th was not voted upon, approved and finalized by the schools' AD's until the Monday before the tournament. Though the ILH sent out a proposal to move the start date to October 30th about a month ago there were a lot of coaches against the date change. Many coaches from the various ILH schools also told our kids that the could still participate in the tournament, interpreting the club blackout rule as the date of final cuts, not the start of tryouts. Last week, a parent from Maryknoll sent a letter to their AD which was circulated to the ILH schools clarifying that the kids could not participate in any outside leagues as of the start date of tryouts.
The move up of the ILH Tryout dates greatly affected the tournament. There was consideration to cancel the tournament altogether but the outer Island teams had already paid for their arrangments, and their coaches still wanted to come over to Oahu to play.
About 1/2 of the U12 and U14 teams (including our team) had to drop out. For the U17 division the Force and Aiea dropped out in the middle of the tournament.
Darren who runs the Summer Tournaments -- also couldn't participate in helping us organize this tournament since he is working on the Punahou season and their Intermediate/ JV tryouts that occurred last week.
The U10's admitedly did not go very well. The games had 1 paid ref and 1 volunteer ref - and I know there's been a lot of discussions about that.
I know Darren changed the U17 brackets in the last day so all the remaining teams could participate since Aiea and Force dropped out on that day. Otherwise the Kings and Punch would've been out.
Kings and Punch had to play each other w/ the winner getting into the bracketed play. St. Joes, the #2 seed (who lost to the Sharks) played the winner of Kings / Punch and the Sharks who had not lost played Hilo. Sharks beat Hilo in one Semi and Kings ended up beating St. Joes in the other.
The St. Joes poster is bitter, but YOU guys were seeded correctly and whose fault was it that you guys gave up a 12 point lead with 4 minutes left to the Kings to lose?
Kings poster (1st post) is bitter, but you guys got 6 games. The Refs alone cost $50 per game (which doesn't include gym rental fee, permitting fees, insurance fees, or scorekeepers cost in addition other costs). You guys got more than your money's worth. Your parents are also notorious complainers which is the purported reason why you're blackballed from NJB.
Bottom line is that many of us volunteered our time to help provide an event for your kids to play AND most of our kids weren't able to play. Yes, there were problems -- many caused by the ILH date change, others not. However, no one else w/ the exception of NJB and no other basketball club is spending the time or effort to provide a tournament for our kids to play in.
So, until you step up you should shut up.
