McKinley High School senior Chelsie Sato has been a standout soccer and basketball player for the past four years, having earned O'ahu Interscholastic Association all-star recognition in both.

"It would be hard for someone if they love both sports, but they could play only one," Sato said yesterday after basketball practice.

About 18 months from now, her younger sister Kylie might be in that situation.

Starting in the 2008-09 school year, the high school girls basketball season in Hawai'i will move from the spring to winter, conflicting with soccer season.

Kylie Sato, a McKinley freshman, is a center-midfielder for the Tigers' soccer team and a guard on their basketball team. She said right now she doesn't want to give up either sport.

"(But) my dad said I would have to choose (eventually)," Kylie said.

The tough choice facing Sato and other girls soccer/basketball players is just one of many consequences — positive and negative — that will continue to sprout as a result of Thursday's unanimous decision by the Hawai'i High School Athletic Association's executive board to move girls basketball from spring to winter, softball from winter to spring and boys volleyball from fall to spring.

One of the biggest impacts will be on athletic directors and league coordinators, who face a logistical nightmare trying to find adequate gym space and game/practice times for basketball, baseball and softball.

Gyms and fields are at a premium in many of the state's five leagues, and scheduling already is a challenge under the current format. In the Interscholastic League of Honolulu, the challenge is multiplied because the private-school league includes Division II and intermediate teams.

Punahou, for example, has six boys basketball teams — Varsity I, Varsity II, JV I, JV II, Intermediate I (freshmen) and Intermediate II (7th/8th grade). With girls basketball's arrival in the winter season of 2008-09, six more teams will be added to the mix, meaning 12 teams at one school will be competing for gym space and practice/game times every day.

"There's over 200 games on our girls basketball schedule, so if you add that to the boys it probably would be over 400 games," said Mid-Pacific Institute athletic director Bill Villa, who is the girls basketball coordinator for the Interscholastic League of Honolulu. "We have a gym (at MPI), but already when there's games going on (after school), some teams can't practice or we have to go outdoors or rent a gym somewhere else. I'm not opposed (to the changes), but it's going to have a big effect and will take a lot of planning."

Moanalua boys coach Greg Tacon, who coached in California and Washington for 14 years before guiding Punahou's program from 2002 through 2006, says the concurrent season works on the Mainland but Hawai'i probably will need to make sacrifices for it to work here.

"Most states cap the number of games each team plays, so there were years when we played only five 'preseason' games," Tacon said. "And when the boys played at home, the girls would play away, so you lose fan support and the cheerleaders, things like that. I think in the OIA we can work it out OK, but scheduling in the ILH is going to be a pain because of all those (JV and intermediate) teams."

Even in the OIA, Tacon said gym space already is tight in the winter because cheerleaders and wrestlers also use the gyms for practices and tournaments.

He also wonders about preseason tournaments, since schools like Moanalua, McKinley and Kalaheo currently host big tournaments for boys and girls.

"Nobody will want to give those up, because it's too big of a fund-raiser," Tacon said. "For our (boys) tournament, we monopolize the gym for four days, 10 hours a day. Now there will be girls tournaments in December, too."

Similar challenges await softball/baseball programs and administrators, who must solve the problem of shared fields and facilities. Many of the softball fields in Hawai'i are located on the outfields of the baseball fields, which means both cannot be used at the same time.

MPI has separate baseball and softball fields, but the intermediate softball team still practices on the baseball field and all the teams share the batting cage.

"It's probably going to impact community programs, too, because now high schools will be fighting with little leagues for the same fields," Villa said.

And while athletes like Kylie Sato and 'Iolani freshman Elissa Minamishin (soccer/basketball) will be forced to make tough choices on participation, so will some coaches.

Bob Morikuni, for example, is the head coach for McKinley's boys and girls basketball programs. Bob Samson is the head coach for Campbell's boys and Maryknoll's girls. Others are assistant coaches for boys and girls.

"Right now you can do both," Morikuni said, "but if it's in the same season, I don't know ..."

Tough decisions await him.

But he's not alone.

Reach Wes Nakama at wnakama@honoluluadvertiser.com.