For two months, Hawaii running back Dayton Furuta worked hard in the training room to rehabilitate an injured ankle and resume running on a football field.

For five years, Furuta worked hard in classrooms to earn enough credits to walk in today’s graduation ceremony.

“It’s surreal,” said Furuta, a 2014 Mililani High graduate who enrolled at UH in January 2015. “Your freshman year, you’re going through the grind, and you’re like, ‘I don’t know if I can do this for five years.’ But you blink your eyes a couple times, and you’re here, you’re walking (at graduation). Our last game is Tuesday. And that’s it. My career as a Warrior is over.”

The Warriors are practicing at an off-campus site this morning in advance of the SoFi Hawaii Bowl against Brigham Young on Christmas Eve. But 11 seniors have been excused to participate in the concurrent commencement ceremony in the Stan Sheriff Center.

Furuta and his sister, Tia, who played for the Rainbow Wahine soccer team, are the first members of their family to earn a four-year degree.

Slot receiver Cedric Byrd II, who grew up in Long Beach, Calif., said 20 family members are in town to celebrate his graduation.

“It’s a blessing to be able to graduate,” Byrd said.

When an offer from Syracuse fell through when he was a high school senior, Byrd opted to attend Long Beach City College as a gateway to a Division I program. Byrd accumulated enough transferable credits in three junior-college semesters to join the Warriors in January 2018.

Byrd, who has taken as many as six classes in a semester, managed to meet his goal of completing his studies and UH football career at nearly the same time. The academic demands “plus football,” Byrd said, “it was tough. But at the end of the day, it was worth it.”

Linebacker Solomon Matautia recalled studying the analytics as a freshman in 2015. “When we first started this journey,” he said, “I was looking at the numbers of the guys who didn’t finish (college). I was hoping that wouldn’t be me.”

But Matauia soon became known as a player who tackled school assignments as relentlessly as opponents.

“We embraced the grind,” Matautia said. “The worst is on the road, trying to do (school) work on the plane. Or in the hotel, when you want to hang out with your teammates, your boys, but you have to do homework.”

His solution? “I’ve mastered it by doing it before we leave (on road trips),” Matautia said. “Just take care of everything before we leave so once we get on the plane, it’s all football.”

A white-knuckle time was following the Dec. 7 Mountain West Conference championship game in Boise. The team returned early Sunday. A major school project was due on Tuesday.

“That was a stressful week,” said Matautia, who completed the project in time.

Kicker Ryan Meskell said he found a calm approach to school and football.

“You have to balance it out so you’re happy and not stressed,” Meskell said. “If you’re constantly feeling everything is too hard, it can affect your performance, your day-to-day life, and relationships.”

Meskell said he often tries to finish assignments a week ahead of the due date.

“I feel a week before is better than most people who do it a day before,” Meskell said. “It is hard balancing it all, but it’s worthwhile. You learn time management, discipline — skills that you can take to the next phase of your life. Being a football player in college is a lot of pressure, a lot of hard work. (Graduating) is an accomplishment. I’m very proud of it.”