For Itoman, the sky is always the limit

BJ Itoman waited until her basketball career was over to become a high flyer.

The former standout ‘Iolani and Hawaii Rainbow Wahine point guard went from running fast breaks to navigating runways in the cockpit of massive C-17 transport aircraft. She is now a captain in the Hawaii Air National Guard.

After graduating as the UH career assists leader in 1999, Itoman was ready for something else. She breaks down her life into “phases.” So she completely phased the sport out, despite leaving with Western Athletic Conference first-team and all-academic decorations.

Last week, she phased hoops back in. After recently returning home from a one-year deployment to Iraq, Itoman shared her experiences with middle and high school-aged kids at the Rainbow Wahine Basketball Camp.

“It’s been quite a while,” the 33-year-old realized after stepping into Klum Gym. “I haven’t actually played in forever. But it was pretty cool when I first came in sat down, watching the kids shoot around. It did bring back feelings from when I was here in college and playing pickup games with the guys and girls. It was definitely a good time in my life.”

As an unabashed success story, she was sought by the UH coaches as a speaker at the camp for years, but could never make it with her high-demand job that takes her all over the Pacific Rim. Currently, she is re-training to fly C-17s after serving as an executive officer to two generals in Baghdad. (Because she was out of the air for a year, she must meet certain benchmarks to fly again.)

Itoman encouraged the campers to find their own success with a three-step process: find your passion, figure out what you want to achieve with it and set your priorities around getting there.

“She was happy to come and reminisce about the old times. She was awesome,” Wahine assistant coach Da Houl said. “We’d been trying to get her since she graduated, but she was too busy flying all over the world.”

Houl said it with a chuckle, obviously not holding it against the 5-foot-5 tenacious defender and playmaker she used to coach under Vince Goo.

In aviation, Itoman had found her passion.

Itoman has her older brother, Ryan, to thank for that. Ryan Itoman is a major in the Hawaii Air National Guard, only he flies fighter aircraft. He introduced BJ to the idea of flying around the time she got her degrees in exercise science and math from UH.

She never had expressed an interest in flying, but Ryan had a feeling she’d be a natural with her high hand-eye coordination, competitiveness, and work ethic. Once BJ ascended through the competitive training process in 2003, he was proven right.

“My sister, she’s always been a workaholic. She’s always been a worker bee,” Ryan said from Florida, where he is training to fly new F-22 Raptors. “I think it’s just in her blood and soul of who she is.”

She’d done it before. Houl remembers how Itoman came to UH without an outside shot, but by putting in the time, added that facet to her game by the end of her career. She finished with 487 assists — tops by 80 — and was second in steals with 256.

Though Ryan still wonders what it would have been like flying a brother-sister tandem in the same fighter wing, BJ felt right at home with the behemoth C-17 Globemasters — formerly the C-130s — which are crewed by just a handful of people despite their size. It was never about flashiness for her.

“It’s pretty much a big computer flying in the air, a lot of automation,” Itoman said. “Sometimes it takes a little fun out of it because it’s a lot of computer management vs. flying. But it’s amazing the technology that we have.”

Her job has allowed her to visit memorable places like Wake Island and Okinawa. One of her favorite moments is swimming among thousands of special stingless jellyfish in a brackish lake in Palau.

And though she left basketball behind, Itoman carries elements of that with her, too.

“I definitely have a lot of fond memories … those memories I’ll carry with me always,” Itoman said. “The lessons I learned, and the coaches I played under, the teamwork. I’ll always carry those things forward to achieve success wherever I go.”