The University of Hawaii football team was disappointed it could not count the Mountain West Conference championship trophy among its cargo coming back from Boise on Saturday night.

But the Warriors did bring home one of their most loyal fans, and got her to the starting line of the Honolulu Marathon with a couple of hours to spare on Sunday morning.

Then Fuchsia Yamashiro completed her eighth marathon in 3:52:28, good for 20th place in her age group. She was among nearly 30 relatives and family friends who participated in the marathon, the Start To Park 10K or Saturday’s Merrie Mile.

Even her 87-year-old grandmother walked the Merrie Mile for the second year in a row.

“I’m the jewel,” Ruby Yamashiro said with a smile. “Every day I walk about 3 miles. I love to walk.”

“We do this every year,” said Fuchsia, a former Castle High School cross country runner who is general manager of Jaburritos Sushi Burritos Restaurant in Las Vegas. “It’s a family reunion.”

Her passions of UH football and distance running were on a collision course because the Warriors made it to the conference title game. It seemed something would have to give.

“I go to all the road games,” Yamashiro said. “The only one I missed (in four years) was because I was running in a half-marathon.”

This time it came close to being the other way around, as she nearly missed the marathon because of a football game.

“My friends were saying, ‘Skip the marathon, skip the marathon,’ Yamashiro said. “I told them, ‘I can’t do that. But I can do both.’ ”

Yamashiro figured out a plan where she could watch most of the first half of the UH game and still get to Hawaii on Saturday night, maybe even with time for a few hours of sleep before the marathon Sunday morning.

She left Albertsons Stadium at 3:15 p.m., Saturday, late in the first half and the score tied at 3-all. Yamashiro got to the airport in plenty of time for her connecting flight to San Francisco. But its departure was delayed, meaning she’d miss the connecting flight to Honolulu. And there was no other combination of flights that could get her here before 2:30 p.m. on Sunday … 91⁄2 hours after the start of the marathon.

So she did what any true fan would do. She went back to the game and saw the final minutes of UH’s 31-10 loss.

There would be other marathons — including Boston next April, for which she has made a qualifying time. Still, running with her ohana is just a once-a-year happening, and she did not want to miss it.

“And when you sign up for a run, it’s something you psyche yourself up for,” she added.

“We were trying to think of some kind of way to get her here in time,” said her mother, Lynette Yamashiro. “But we couldn’t find anything.”

Then, “kind of a miracle happened,” Fuchsia said.

“Somebody said the boys land at 1 a.m. (in Honolulu on the UH team charter flight) … I spoke to someone who spoke to someone at the athletic department,” she said. “About an hour later they checked with the Mountain West and whoever else they had to get permission from and they said I could fly with them.

“If I wasn’t a crazy die-hard fan before, I sure am now,” said Yamashiro, who organized a 700-person tailgate party when UH played at UNLV this season. “They’re never getting rid of me. … I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

She showed it by wearing a Warriors jersey during the race.

“I had this race outfit picked out in advance,” Yamashiro wrote on Twitter. “Because win OR lose, true fans rep their team with pride!”

“We were happy to help and we look forward to seeing Fuchsia at the SoFi Hawaii Bowl and at our road games next year,” UH athletics director David Matlin said.