For the third straight year, the Hawai‘i High School Athletic Association will hold its Open Division state championship game at the University of Hawai‘i's Clarence T.C. Ching Athletics Complex — this time with a twist.
The 2025 HHSAA Open Division football championship game will be held on Dec. 5. Meanwhile, the HHSAA Division I and Division II football championship games will be held in a Nov. 28 doubleheader at Mililani High School.
"That's the only date (UH) said they had available," HHSAA executive director Chris Chun said of the Dec. 5 date when reached for comment by Aloha State Daily. "We wanted to go earlier, so I think the ILH teams are going to be off for a while."
The final ILH regular season game between Punahou and Kamehameha is set for Oct. 24, while the HHSAA Open semifinals take place on Nov. 21 at Mililani.
The Open Division debuted as the HHSAA's highest-tiered state tournament in 2016. Saint Louis has won five of the HHSAA Open Division titles, while Kahuku has won the other three. Division I serves as the state's second tier football championship, while Division II is the third tier.
While a prep football season was not held in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, that was also the year Aloha Stadium was condemned and deemed unable to hold crowds of any kind.
When prep football returned in the Islands in 2021, the Division I and Open Division championship games were played in a doubleheader at Farrington High School in on Dec. 23, while the Division II state title game between Kapa‘a and Kamehameha-Maui was held one week later, also at Farrington.
In 2022, Kahuku defeated Punahou in the HHSAA Open Division title game at Mililani on Nov. 25, while the Division I and II championship games were played a night later.
The 2023 season was the first time the HHSAA Open Division championship game was held at UH-Mānoa's T.C. Ching Athletics Complex, with Kahuku edging Mililani in a 21-19 thriller on Nov. 29. One night later, the Division I and II state title games were held at Mililani. The pattern of playing a standalone Open Division game at Ching with the next two divisions playing for state titles at Mililani the next night continued in 2024.
The 2025 season will mark the first time since 2019 that the Hawai‘i high school football season ends with the HHSAA Open Division championship game. From 2017 to 2019, Aloha Stadium was the host of HHSAA football state championship game tripleheaders.
A high school football season in Hawai‘i hasn't ended in December since 2021, back when the OIA season was pushed back six weeks due to COVID restrictions. Prior to that, both the 2008 and 2009 seasons ended on the first Friday in December.
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Christian Shimabuku can be reached at christian@alohastatedaily.com.
