Editor’s note: As Dino Babers has led the return of Syracuse football to relevance, he has kept his life story a closely guarded secret. This week, beat writer Nate Mink cracks open the wall for an exclusive multi-part series on three turning points in Babers’ pre-Orange life.

Part II: How ‘the Triangle’ helped Babers in a time of crisis

Part III: Inside Babers’ near-death accident, and what it tells us about his future

Syracuse, N.Y. -- Dino Babers wanted a recruit to meet someone from his past.

So Babers called up Ron Davis, his old high school basketball coach, and asked him to make the short drive to Parkland High School in Winston-Salem, N.C.

There, Babers told the story of the time Davis asked him to make an unselfish decision. Babers was a senior at Morse High School in San Diego, a 6-foot-1, 200-pound three-sport athlete whose future was on the football field.

As the story goes, Davis told Babers he didn’t want him to risk sabotaging his college football career on the basketball court. He told him there was a 6-foot-8 underclassman who would likely gobble up Babers’ playing time.

“I’m not asking you to leave the team,” Davis told Babers, “but if you’re not going to play that much, why don’t you think about giving your position to a sophomore or freshman?”

Babers came back the next day and relinquished his position to the underclassman.

“He believed in team first,” Davis said.

That’s just one vignette that sheds light on how Babers’ past influences the way he leads his Syracuse football program. Babers, Davis believes, wanted that recruit to hear that story in case he wound up in a similar position at Syracuse.

It also helps explain why Babers was drawn to the islands to attend college at the University of Hawaii, to play for a coach in Dick Tomey whose team-building philosophies latched onto him like a virus that has spread into all facets of his life.

Everything was about family, La Familia, ‘Ohana – the words that roll off Babers’ tongue in succession in any press conference, community talk or team meeting.

Tomey recruited Polynesian and American Samoan players, kids from Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. He and his staff took exceptional liking to military dependents, such as Babers, because they were used to change and adapting to different environments. It didn’t hurt Babers, of course, was born at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu and attended pre-school in Hawaii.

He got along with teammates from all walks of life. Players walked by Babers’ locker and often got a ribbing.

“It was seamless for him. It wasn’t a big deal for him to embrace Hawaii,” said Ken Niumatalolo, the head coach at Navy who was a teammate of Babers.

“Dino doesn’t see color. He sees people. That’s always how I’ll remember him.”

Dino Babers (35) during his playing days at Hawaii.

There was also a unique aspect to Hawaii football called the Home Away Home program, which paired local families with athletes to symbolize the island culture and, for some, provide a haven for home-sick kids who couldn’t travel back to the mainland for holidays.

Babers met the Yamashiro family through his roommate and became close with a teenage boy named Danny. They closed down the parking lot of Aloha Stadium tailgating late after games, grabbed meals together, hung out by the pool in the Yamashiros’ backyard, brought Danny to practices, watched his games and refined his jumping technique in the pursuit of grabbing an 8-foot basketball rim.

When Yamashiro was in Central New York last spring for a meeting at Cornell, Babers invited him over to his house to watch Tiger Woods win The Masters, just so they could share the memory.

“Dino makes me better because he loves me,” Yamashiro said.

As a kid, Yamashiro looked at the Hawaii players as superheroes, and Babers was slapped together well, a chiseled jack-of-all-trades who played a little linebacker, safety, fullback and was a special teams aficionado.

Before Hawaii, Babers attended Gompers Prep in San Diego, a feeder school for Lincoln High School. Sensing it would be difficult supplanting an exceptional athlete named Marcus Allen from Lincoln’s starting lineup, Babers decided to attend Morse High School for a better opportunity to get on the field. Allen went on to win the Heisman Trophy at USC in 1981 and get inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame and Pro Football Hall of Fame.

At Morse, Babers was a second-team, all-county defensive lineman, lettered in basketball and was a state qualifier in triple jump. He once burst through a bunched-up line for a 66-yard touchdown against Henry, rushed for 132 yards on just seven carries against Pt. Loma, had a pick-six and a 40-yard touchdown against Crawford and rushed for a pair of touchdowns and snagged two interceptions against Kearny.

He narrowed his college decision to Hawaii and Washington and may have wound up playing for Don James in Seattle if not for a recruiting snafu.

Babers took a visit to Washington, even got invited on a boat ride around the lake, a special perk reserved for recruits the Husky staff was serious about.

When Babers returned to San Diego, his high school coach, stunned James never had a conversation with Babers, told him to call Hawaii.

He roomed that first year with a kid from Oceanside, the California Interscholastic Federation champion triple jumper, no less. The next year, they and two other teammates moved into apartment No. D236, a two-bedroom unit in the newly built Noelani dorms, just down the hall from a volleyball player named Susan Hemenway. Babers was almost late to practice the day he took Susan, now his wife of 31 years, out on their first date at Harpo’s Pizza.

Babers spent six years on the islands, including one season as a graduate assistant under Tomey in 1984. Tomey later hired Babers onto his staff at Arizona, where they spread the same principles to new players in a new environment.

When eulogizing Tomey at the coach’s memorial service on the Arizona campus in May, Babers referenced Proverbs 27:17 early in his speech.

As iron sharpens iron, one man sharpens another

It was the same verse Yamashiro recently used to describe the dynamic of Babers’ and his close-knit teammates who were like big brothers to him.

It was the same phrase Syracuse senior defensive end Kendall Coleman heard from his defensive line coach during a recent practice before discussing the development of the 2019 team.

It means when one rubs up against another, both become stronger.

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