Hawaii men’s basketball: ‘Bows unveil new locker room

Coach Eran Ganot posed in the new men's basketball locker room in the Stan Sheriff Center. / Photo by Brian McInnis

Whistles and wide eyes greeted the latest upgrade for the Hawaii men’s basketball team.

When players rounded the wall corner inside their locker room, there was amazement, especially among the returnees who’d used the 25-year-old facilities in place since the Stan Sheriff Center opened in 1994. The makeover was complete.

There were glistening new lockers (16 of them), showers, sinks, toilets and urinals, flooring, carpeting, ceilings, televisions, a sound system and a brand-new lounge and snack area, all at a cost of nearly $200,000. Private donations — from a few dozen people honored with plaques around the room and on the lockers themselves — drove the project.

“A lot of people can talk about how it helps recruiting, but it certainly helps student-athlete welfare in terms of enjoying your time here,” UH coach Eran Ganot said. “It’s really exciting. We basically maximized the space and the facility we have, and made this a modern, first-class locker room.”

A visitor from Hawaii Warrior World was similarly amazed upon viewing the renovation on Thursday. The sharp, dark wooden lockers are of the same fashion of the new UH football, baseball and women’s basketball (in progress) locker rooms. There was plenty of room to stretch out.

Ganot regularly inspected the project over the course of the summer, in similar fashion as Gym II when that renovation was underway. He called the banging of hammers and other tools “the sound of progress.”

“With Gym II and this locker room, I probably walked by every day. I was here to see the progress,” he said. “And when you come in and see the finished product, it gives you chills. Pride. It makes you feel proud with what’s been going on. Your initial feeling is, ‘I can’t wait for our guys to see this. I can’t wait for our guys to see this.’ ”

This UH video has some of the players’ first reactions to their new digs.

Locker room reno 🔥🔥🔥#HawaiiMBB #GoBows pic.twitter.com/ugASs9Rv8B
— HAWAII BASKETBALL (@HawaiiMBB) July 18, 2019

Former player Mike Thomas commented, “Sheesh,” on Instagram, while Brandon Spearman remarked “Enjoy it young fellas!”

Freshman guard Kameron Ng was appreciative Thursday, despite the fact he hadn’t been around to use the previous lockers.

“I heard a lot of it, the coaches talking about it when it was getting done,” the St. Francis graduate said. “To be able to see it (finished), was an awe moment. I got to see it a little bit before they did do it, so just from what it was before to what it is now, it’s an athlete’s dream to be in a locker room like this. So I’m blessed to be coming to UH at this time.”

Ganot stressed to his players the importance of maintaining the room, as it’s one of their areas of greatest time spent to work, along with Gym II.

“Coach has been stressing a lot,” Ng said. “For it to be at a top level right now, it’s going to help us that much more for the upcoming season.

“They told us how much work went into it, so when they told us about that, we just knew for us to be in this situation, we’re super lucky, so we’re going to do our best jobs to keep it looking like this.”

The coaches still must add two custom-made white boards to post information for practice, pregame and halftime talks. Ganot also plans to add imagery of the team’s current seniors and some past standouts.

Ganot thanked a variety of people for their money or time contributions to the project, all the way up to UH President David Lassner and athletic director David Matlin. He had a special thank-you for a small group of donors who helped jump-start funding.

“It’s like a dream. Things don’t always happen that way. It started with a group I met with … Peter Ho, Jeff Arce, Ray Vara, Marc Tilker, Patrick Kobayashi …. . It started there.”

So how did UH convince people the project needed doing?

Ganot paused for a moment, then replied: “Sometimes I walk around saying, ‘1981, 1994,’ and people go, ‘what does that mean?’ 1981 is the last time Gym II was touched. 1994 was the last time this locker room was touched. So it’s been time. But we know it isn’t easy. We added the plaques (of past NCAA and NIT tournament teams) leading up to this hallway. Our conference room was done. We just came off the foreign tour a year ago. … We have great people who support us. We talk about what we need, and why we need it, because we know how much work people do to get the money that they have. So if they’re going to donate their hard-earned time or money to a project, they have to understand what it’s for and why. So we’ve done a good job in explaining that. And to be honest, as people get to know the student-athletes on our team, they like to support those guys because of the way they are.”

Here’s some additional shots of the new digs: