Invited Teams Face Travel Ban

Although Canyon and Crespi highs have been invited to play football in Hawaii next year, Southern Section officials probably will bar the teams from going.

Canyon, Crespi and Morse High in San Diego have been invited to play three island teams in a tripleheader Aug. 25 at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu. Morse has played in Hawaii for the past five years, including a game last weekend in a tripleheader that served as a fund-raiser for the Shawn Akina scholarship fund. Akina is a former Hawaiian high school star who died of a heart attack in 1986.

Canyon Coach Harry Welch said that he was eager to make the trip, adding, “If the CIF allows us and we can afford it, we’ll jump at it.”

Southern Section rules allow teams to make one out-of-state trip every three years, but those rules also forbid teams from playing games outside their sport’s season. Because the Hawaiian tripleheader would be played before the Southern Section football season begins, the teams would be ineligible to play.

“We’ve already said no to teams that want to go to Hawaii because that would give those teams a leg up on everyone in the section,” Southern Section Commissioner Stan Thomas said. “That’s a pretty hard and fast rule.”

Canyon and Crespi can plead their cases to the section’s executive committee, which will next meet Oct. 26.