La Pietra, an all-girls school with a senior class of 32 students, has been promoted to Division I in Interscholastic League of Honolulu basketball.

The ILH and the state's other four leagues will present their lists of Division I and Division II teams to the Hawai'i High School Athletic Association at a meeting tomorrow. In a switch from this past season, Sacred Hearts will move down to DII in the ILH and La Pietra, which won the league's DII championship, will move up to DI.

This is despite the fact that La Pietra's best player, Courtney Gaddis, has transferred to Kalani and the Lady Panthers' second-best player, Megan Berardy, graduated. La Pietra will return eight seniors and one junior, but its JV team had only eight players this past season and won only two games in Division II, finishing next-to-last.

ILH spokesman Georges Gilbert said the move was approved by athletic directors in May after applying the league's classification criteria, which was approved by its ADs and principals last year. The criteria originally accounted for enrollment, but now is mainly based on recent performance.

However, some La Pietra parents are concerned about the Lady Panthers not having the personnel and depth to compete against traditional ILH and state powerhouses like Punahou, Kamehameha and Iolani on a regular basis. ILH teams have won 25 of the 30 Division I state championships.

"The bottom line is, this doesn't make sense," said Cindy Shih, one of 10 La Pietra parents who jointly submitted a detailed "position statement" objecting to the move to DI. "A few years ago, I remember when La Pietra had a hard time finding enough girls to come out for the team. The program has finally had some success this year, and now the girls have to be thrown in there (with the DI powers).

"I would hate to see the program go back to that (down period)."

Lady Panthers coach Anthony Czaja also said that is his greatest fear. He said he has accepted the move — after initially being "more than upset" — and is preparing his team accordingly, but said it could cause big problems in 2008 if La Pietra somehow stays in Division I.

"After next year, we lose those eight seniors, and we don't have a lot of girls coming up," Czaja said. "Even the returnees we have now were mostly role players last season."

The parents argue that La Pietra clearly belongs in Division II based on its enrollment, which is among the smallest in the 15-team ILH. According to Advertiser research, La Pietra has less than half the number of senior girls compared to Maryknoll, the next-smallest Division I school.

Compared to the other DI schools, La Pietra has one-third the number of senior girls that Mid-Pacific has and about one-fourth of Iolani's; Punahou and Kamehameha have about seven times more girls.

In the position statement, the parents also point out that La Pietra does not have near the tradition, facilities or amount of college prospects compared to other Division I schools.

A SACRIFICE SEASON?

The parents also speculate in the position statement that La Pietra's move up to take the place of Sacred Hearts is simply to preserve the ILH's two Division I state tournament berths, which are awarded based on a formula that considers the size of each league.

However, Gilbert points out that nobody will know how many berths will be awarded to each league until after tomorrow, when the total number of DI and DII teams across the state will be determined.

Gilbert and ILH girls basketball coordinator Bill Villa added that the league tries to seek a balance — with 50 percent seen as ideal — between its number of DI and DII teams.

"If we went strictly by enrollment, then you would pretty much end up with only three teams in Division I — and how appealing is that? Not just to the ILH, but to the community in general?" Villa said. "The problem with our league is that we have such a wide range of enrollments, and there's a big disparity between the biggest schools and the smallest ones."

But La Pietra parents are concerned that their daughters — without a legitimate chance to compete for a Division I title, or even play close games against the top teams — will amount to being sacrificial lambs who are Division I participants only to satisfy a league quota.

"I don't see why the kids should have to work so hard for (what would amount to being) a 'sacrifice season,' " Shih said. "They would be out there just to fill in numbers."

FINE-TUNING A SYSTEM

Czaja said he understands the parents' concerns and agrees with their arguments about enrollment. He said he even submitted a list of five concerns to La Pietra athletic director Katy Bourne, who was to have presented it to the other league ADs.

But Czaja said he also understood it probably is too late to change things for next season. Bourne could not be reached for comment.

"For now, our athletic director basically is supporting the system through which the league set up," Czaja said. "I don't think we were the team that should have gone up (to Division I), but that's the way it is, and my job as a coach is to take the players I have and prepare them for the level we are in."

Gilbert and Villa also said that the criteria was set long ago and after much discussion.

"We had a classification committee with representatives of big schools, small schools, all-boys schools, all-girls schools, and they spent at least 25 or 30 hours coming up with this criteria," Villa said. "Then they presented it to the rest of the athletic directors and they all spent more hours on it. Then it went to the principals and was discussed again."

But Villa acknowledged there's more work to be done.

"The ADs opted to go through with this criteria at least one time," he said. "We know it still needs to be fine-tuned."

Reach Wes Nakama at wnakama@honoluluadvertiser.com.