In the ideal world we’d add every sport to the TV schedule. But since my company credit card has a restricted limit…it takes time to bring in new sports offerings.

The “new” much deserving sport we are bringing to you is the HHSAA State Canoe Paddling Championships.

The event itself is Friday at Ke’ehi Lagoon - but - the TV broadcast will be the next day, Saturday. Time on Saturday about 9pm - following our tripleheader of Pacwest Softball. Additional encore showings will be on Sunday at 11am and 8pm.

It would be nice to show the races live but time and logistics don’t allow it now. Hopefully a 30-minute recap show with feature stories will do the schools justice.

I’ve covered a few of these championships and think they’re great.

First they’re easy to follow, prelims, quarter, semi’s, finals all flow along quickly. Then a sprint down and back with lots of close finishes at the line. All done in one half day!

Even better this championship features a coed division to go along with the boy’s and girl’s categories. Great to see the guys and gals work together in a crew for their school. In some regards, I think this is true school spirit in action since they share the same boat for the race.

Could you imagine any other high school sports coed? I guess tennis has mixed events so that’s not a stretch. Volleyball? Hmmm… But I digress, paddlers and fans of outrigger canoe races, enjoy this new TV offering on OC16.

Aloha and have a great day!

For the first time prep sports in Hawaii will be broadcast in HD. We’d like to say the first locally produced version overall. ESPN and the other networks have of course done HD sports like UH football and golf before this. But it’s still fun to be first in on the prep side of things.

The HD telecast can be seen on Oceanic channel 1016. Good ol’ 16 on your cable box will also be there for non-HD viewers.

The menu of basketball tonight is:
Game-1 D2 Boys - Farrington vs Aiea 6pm.

Game-2 D1 Boys - Kamehameha-Hawaii vs Punahou 8pm.

HD fans enjoy and let me know your feedback.

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In other news…

Moanalua didn’t play tonight for third place. Na Menehune had an ineligible player and turned themselves in.

Hey there,

Sorry for no entry yesterday. But it was an ever busier day for me at work. For most of the week I’ve been working the sideline reporter gig for OC16’s HHSAA basketball coverage. But, when Lori Santi had another commitment, the viewing public was stuck with me. My apologizes. Smile.

Doing prep work for the “color commentating” role is a lot more effort and time than sidelines. Which got me to thinking that a good number of people might not know our crew’s makeup. Basically aside from myself and Jenn Boneza, every other on-air talent, camera person, engineer, producer, and director are doing OC16 work as a contractor. They all have other fulltime jobs during the day then make time for this “second” job.

Among the careers of our hard working crew - postal letter carrier, golf club repair specialist, teacher, Army affairs, and of course various broadcasters/camera peeps from the local stations.

They are all tremendously talented and dedicated to sports coverage and OC16’s efforts to showcase Hawaii’s talent. The extra hours they pull on the OC16 side can be a grind. They get a decent check for side money but by no means is it enough to just ditch the day job. And there’s the occasional harassment from fans at various locations who have sworn and tossed threats at the camera guys. Guess that’s a taste of what coaches get to deal with on a regular basis.

So I’ll put it here in black and white - thank you crew for what you do. It’s much appreciated and without you all, we don’t do any of this.

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Tonight’s viewing menu is from the girl’s championships at the Stan Sheriff Center.

Game-1 D2 McKinley vs Campbell 6pm
Game-2 D1 Iolani vs Punaous 8pm

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Tomorrow is the first HD broadcast in the islands of a prep sport! Both boy’s championship games from Blaisdell Arena will be available in HD on channel 1016 - get it? OC16 or channel 16 on regular cable to 1016 on the HD tier…smile.

Check it out and let me know your thoughts on how it looks.

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Happy Aloha Friday all!

For your viewing pleasure, we shift our cameras to the opening night of the boys tournament.

From McKinley:
Game-1 Kalaheo vs Kamehameha-Hawaii 6pm
Game-2 Campbell vs Moanalua 8pm

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In other news, the scorebox has been fixed. You weren’t imagining things, it was blurry last night.

Hello all,

OC16 starts the first of five straight nights of basketball coverage of the HHSAA tournament tonight. We’re at Kaimuki for the first time thanks to some hardworking engineers. We’ve never done five nights of basketball in a row but it’s a fun challenge. Well some of the production people might not say “fun”…lol…

To give you an idea the big semi-trailor truck pulled into Kaimuki at about noon. Some of the crew got in about 1pm with the bulk of the crew call being 2pm. From there, they’ll pull hundreds of yards of cable and hundreds of more pounds of gear - cameras and such.

A portable commercial generator provides the juice needed to power everything. We usually don’t tap into the school’s electrical system to avoid overloading it. The cost of fuel is driving us mad with the extra costs our vendor passes on but such is life.

Producers and the director show up to go over the coverage game plan about 3:30pm. On-air talent wonders in about 4pm. Which just happens to be when the crew meal is served. Go figure how that works out. Smile.

After cramming some food down… Graphics are built and finished, cameras calibrated, audio is checked and re-checked.

And this takes us up to 6pm and tip-off of the first game.

Tuesday - Girls
Game-1 Maui vs Farrington 6pm
Game-2 Aiea vs Iolani 8pm

Around 10pm-ish the broadcast will end. On-air talent will head for their cars as fast they can…lol… But the crew will spend roughly two more hours breaking everything down. Some time after 11pm the truck will pull out of Kaimuki’s now dark lot. Grab some sleep and then start it all over again from McKinley tomorrow for day one of the Boys side.

So much for just a van pulling up and plugging in a cord!

Enjoy the week all…and give props to the hardworking crew guys and gals who work behind the scenes to make it possible.