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It was Aug. 28, 2017, and Alohi Gilman had made it through training camp and into his first week of game prep with his new team, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, when the call came in.
Six days before he was scheduled to put on his new uniform and take the field against Temple, he was told to hang his pads back up.
In that era of college football, transfers were required to redshirt a year. Gilman filed for a waiver of that rule, arguing that he’d had to transfer for reasons outside his control: The new administration under Donald Trump made a rule requiring players at service academies to serve before pursuing a professional sports career.
All parties had signed off on making an exception for Gilman but one — the Naval Academy.
“I was devastated,” Gilman recalled.
Looking back, the experience made him stronger, Gilman said.
It also meant he had the chance to room with and mentor a young freshman named Kyle Hamilton in his senior season at Notre Dame — the extra year he played after taking that unwanted redshirt.
Eight years later, Gilman has been reunited with Hamilton through a trade between the Baltimore Ravens and the Los Angeles Chargers. Their previous relationship has helped smooth his transition to a new team and sparked a defensive turnaround, proving that maybe everything does happen for a reason.
Family connections
In a small town on the island of O‘ahu called Lāʻie, Gilman and his six siblings enjoyed a childhood free from screens as they ran around outdoors “being rascals.”
They all played a variety of sports, from surfing to water polo to rugby, but their father’s love for football was passed down to Gilman.
Despite his father Asai’s experience and connections with the football world — he played and coached at Southern Utah and also worked as a high school coach and a trainer — Gilman was not ranked by 247Sports and had few options to play college football.
Geography played a huge role — the islands of Hawaiʻi are the farthest in the world from any landmass. Gilman also said he was a late bloomer.
But he found a path to a college career through the Naval Academy Preparatory School (a Rhode Island school that gives future midshipmen an extra year of development) thanks to his family’s connection to Navy’s head coach at the time, Ken Niumatalolo, who is from the same town. Looking back, Gilman said he wouldn’t have chosen to go to the Naval Academy if not for that connection.
At the end of a 5,000-mile move from his island of O‘ahu to Rhode Island, Gilman was in for a shock.
“It was a night-and-day difference, obviously,” Gilman said. “Straight island boy, all the way out here on the East Coast, just doing my thing. It’s a lifestyle change, not even just for location, but from a civilian to being in the military is totally different.”
Gilman had to go through boot camp for the prep school. Then he had to go through it again at the Naval Academy when he arrived as a plebe. He said you can’t even compare the difficulty of a training camp to boot camp.
The bonds he created at the Naval Academy have held through the years, even after Gilman’s path took him in a different direction.
“I wouldn’t say within the military side I had the best relationships in terms of my senior staff, but my classmates I did have a great relationship with, who are all doing great things now,” Gilman said.
Although Gilman said he explored Annapolis a little bit and thought it was a great town, his time was mostly taken up by football and the strict schedule the school keeps first-year students to.
Then Trump became president on Jan. 20, 2017. The Department of Defense reversed an Obama-era policy allowing athletes at service academies to defer service for professional athletic careers, instead requiring them to serve two years.
Gilman’s immediate reaction was that he wanted to shoot for the NFL. So he decided to leave.
His teammates were shocked, he said. The bond built among players at service academies is strengthened by the sacrifices required of being in the military.
“You’re stepping into a place where you go to school, you graduate an officer, you have a great job, you have good pay, you’re traveling the world, you’re doing your thing,” Gilman said. “So it’s a very secure option. Versus getting a chance to play in the NFL, obviously, is the one of 1%.”
And it wasn’t like Trump’s decision created a mass exodus.
Still, his teammates respected his wishes.
The same could not be said for everyone else. Gilman recalled pushback and negativity from staff members, school leaders and other classmates. He also received hate mail from “anonymous veterans.”
One of the hardest calls was to his coach, the man who gave him a chance and had connections to his family. Niumatalolo did not agree with Gilman’s decision.
“I think all parties [signed off on the waiver], but one party did not sign off,” Gilman said. “That was actually the Naval Academy, my head coach there. So that was kind of a tough relationship there.”
Niumatalolo is now the coach at San Jose State; he did not reply to a request for comment in time for publication.
Becoming a civilian again
For his next stop, Gilman chose Notre Dame, a school he had 12 tackles against in Navy’s one-point win his freshman year.
“Alohi is a great fit here in terms of his character and also what he wants to achieve academically,” then-Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly said in a statement at the time. “Clearly, that’s primary in our recruiting. Secondly, in terms of his football fit, we got a good look of him against us last season. He plays the style of safety we want in this program. Alohi’s a run-and-hit safety that fits perfectly in the Mike Elko defense.”
The Fighting Irish had to wait to see if he was truly a fit, though. Forced to the sidelines for a year, Gilman said he focused on getting stronger. According to his college profile, he stayed involved by helping with the defensive scout teams.
When he was finally able to suit up again, Gilman became one of Notre Dame’s starting safeties. Despite the year off, he had 95 tackles, three tackles for loss, five pass breakups, three forced fumbles and two interceptions. He also set a Notre Dame record with 19 tackles in a bowl game.
Gilman earned a captaincy, and when he returned for camp his senior season, he found himself rooming with the newest five-star recruit, a freshman named Kyle Hamilton.
Hamilton had met Gilman the year before during his official visit and remembered thinking Gilman was a mild-mannered, respectful, cool guy who was easy to talk to. Gilman joked that he remembered Hamilton as a scared freshman.
Hamilton had chosen Notre Dame over 35 other schools. He was very committed to going there, but actually being there was a bit of a culture shock.
“Coming from Georgia, going to Notre Dame, it was a different part of the country I’d never been in ... but it’s different being there,” Hamilton said. “There’s obviously struggles every freshman goes through, and he just kind of lightened the load for me a little bit by showing me the ropes.”
Hamilton recalled nights through camp where he’d lie in the dark, staring at the ceiling, wondering what he was doing.
Gilman could connect to those experiences, having gone through a similar culture shock when he left his island. Hamilton said Gilman helped him see that his struggles were ones many people go through and that he belonged.
“[He] believed in me, reiterating you have the talent to play this year, my freshman year, so he just gave me more confidence and calmed me down a bit,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton was named to multiple freshman All-American lists that year.
Gilman finished fourth on the team in tackles (74) with three tackles for loss, one sack, one interception, two pass breakups, one fumble recovery and three forced fumbles.
That year together forged an enduring friendship that has lasted despite time and distance.
Another new start
Hamilton thought Gilman should have gone higher.
As part of the COVID-19 draft, Gilman fell to the sixth round. But, again, things worked out with Gilman going to the Los Angeles Chargers, the team closest to his hometown of Lāʻie.
Over the years, Hamilton cheered Gilman on from afar, marveling at the way Gilman made an impact as a rookie and then established himself as a veteran.
Gilman got a chance to reunite with his Naval Academy Preparatory School roommate 1st Lt. Jawaun Stanley when the Chargers visited Camp Pendleton. Beyond the emotional reunion, Gilman tried to make time for as many people from the community as he could.
“I think just going through that experience, you have a certain amount of respect for what they do ... there’s always going to be sour apples in the bunch, so I just kind of look at it as overall, just having that respect for it,” Gilman said.
Then on Oct. 7, 2025, eight years after Gilman’s departure from Annapolis, a trade between the Chargers and the Ravens sent Gilman back to Maryland.
Amidst the defense’s struggles to open the 2025 season, Hamilton started to hear rumblings that the Ravens might trade for a third safety.
Alohi Gilman was one of the names being tossed around. Hamilton didn’t get his hopes up, but he certainly thought about how cool it would be to reunite with his former mentor.
After the trade was made, Gilman hopped on a plane, slept about three hours, then was in the facility for practice the next day. Short on sleep, he was still all smiles as he spoke about his reunion with Hamilton.
However, the relationship felt very different.
“The roles have reversed a little bit because I was the captain of the team when he was a freshman, and now he’s, you know, a big leader on this team and one of the best players in the NFL,” Gilman said.
This time, it was Hamilton trying to get Gilman up to speed. Gilman “picks things up like a sponge,” Hamilton said, but their previous friendship sped up the process.
“Especially at safety ... there’s a relationship there that needs to be there for you to execute on the field,” Hamilton said. “And we completely skipped that stuff because we’ve done it before.”
The two of them reminisce about their Notre Dame days and endure all the Notre Dame hate Hamilton said they get.
Rookie Malaki Starks watches the old friends laugh and tell inside jokes, and has benefitted from the trade: It allowed Hamilton to be used in other areas of the defense, but also gave Starks a new mentor in Gilman.
“I think he was able to help me continue to have confidence within my learning process,” Starks said.
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