The state's five high school athletic leagues quickly approved one another's Division I and Division II classification declarations yesterday, without any objections.

But a group of La Pietra girls basketball parents still is looking for avenues to protest the school being promoted to Division I by the Interscholastic League of Honolulu.

"That was pretty much what we expected, but we have backup plans," said Cindy Shih, whose daughter is among nine La Pietra returnees from the Lady Panthers' ILH Division II championship team. "We plan to put together a more formal protest, and one thing we need to do is sit down with our athletic director and talk to her about this face-to-face."

Shih, her husband and eight other parents have submitted a detailed "position statement" explaining why they believe La Pietra is not ready to make the jump to Division I. Among other reasons, they point out that all nine returnees basically were role players last year, and with the school's tiny enrollment — only 32 senior girls — they are better suited for Division II competition.

In promoting La Pietra, the ILH applied a criteria that was established last year by a league subcommittee and now focuses on recent performance. The move, which also slides Sacred Hearts down to Division II from DI, was approved by the league's athletic directors and principals.

And after yesterday's declarations, there aren't many options procedurally for the La Pietra parents to effect change. The Hawai'i High School Athletic Association's executive board meets next month, but each league is responsible for resolving its own classification issues.

There weren't many surprises in other leagues' classifications, but yesterday's meeting again showed how difficult it is to establish a uniform criteria across the state.

Each of the five leagues uses a different criteria, varying from a strict enrollment "cutoff," to performance-based point systems, to simple majority vote by principals. During yesterday's meeting, Kaua'i Interscholastic Federation representative Brent Mizutani asked about an HHSAA sub-committee that supposedly was assigned to create a state-wide criteria for classification.

HHSAA executive director Keith Amemiya replied that it had been explored, but Hawai'i's geographical challenges and unique enrollment situations present big obstacles to that goal.

"On the Mainland, you can drive a couple hundred miles to play an opponent (of similar level), but we live in an island state and are separated by water," Amemiya said. "And if we went by enrollment, almost the whole (22-team O'ahu Interscholastic Association) would be in Division I."

ILH executive director Don Botelho said a state-wide classification system was proposed at the Hawai'i Interscholastic Athletic Directors Association meeting last month, but was defeated.

"Everybody would like to see (a uniform criteria)," Botelho said, "but how do you get there?"

The ILH situation is especially complicated because it has two very large schools (Kamehameha and Punahou) with enrollments of more than 400 students per class, and also tiny schools like La Pietra and Christian Academy, with a bunch of medium-sized schools in between.

The league with the most comparable situation is the Big Island Interscholastic Federation, which has two large schools (Waiakea and Kealakehe), a few tiny ones like Ka'u and Parker, and several more in between.

The BIIF criteria establishes an enrollment "cutoff" of 1,700 students — if a school has more, it is Division I; if it has fewer, it's DII. But DII schools have the option of moving up to DI.

"We have what you could call an 'unwritten power rating,' where if you have years of consistent, good performance, you stay at Division I (despite low enrollment)," said BIIF executive director Ken Yamase. "That's the case in girls basketball with Konawaena and Honoka'a, where they have the history (of success)."

But as OIA executive secretary Dwight Toyama summed up at yesterday's meeting, "You're never going to please everybody."

Reach Wes Nakama at wnakama@honoluluadvertiser.com.