The nickel was circulating last fall.

Nickelback Makana Meyer was at every University of Hawaii practice, position meeting and video session. He studied the game plan, and took the weekly tests on assignments.

“He studies a lot,” said Nick Locher, who coaches the UH safeties and nickelbacks. “He’s always up in my office.”

The thing was, Meyer’s absence from football activities would have been excused while he recovered from a torn ACL is his left knee, an injury suffered during last year’s spring training. While grueling treatment and physical therapy were helpful, Meyer needed the camaraderie and hopefulness from being around the program.

“It was a tough time mentally,” Meyer said. “Being around my (football) brothers, my family, and staying around things I liked to do, helped me stay into it and keep a positive mindset that I’d be back.”

The sport was ingrained into his life when he was 5. After his first youth practice, his father asked: Do you still want to play football?

“Yes,” Meyer recalled answering. “I loved it. It was so much fun.”

He played linebacker, using retired Carolina Panthers linebacker Luke Kuechly as a guiding light. “He was similar to how I wanted to play,” Meyer said. “I thought he was a very cerebral player. He knew what was coming before it happened.”

Through the years, Meyer trained with Asai Gilman, Kawe Johnson and Fastletics, a performance-training program. “Just gaining knowledge from different people helped,” Meyer said.

Meyer was a two-way player for Damien Memorial School before transferring to Mililani High. As a senior, he was named to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s 2021 All-State second team as a defensive back. He also was chosen to the OIA Open Division’s first team.

Meyer signed with UH as a gray shirt, in which he would enroll at UH as a part-time student for the 2022 fall semester and join the Warriors for the 2023 spring semester. After redshirting in 2023, he worked his way into the rotation at nickelback at last year’s spring training before suffering the injury.

Meyer, who has fully healed, has regained his speed (4.5 seconds over 40 yards) while continuing power-cleaning training. He also is back in the rotation at nickelback, blitzing off the edge, mixing it up in the box and covering inside receivers.

“I like to cover the best man, to compete,” Meyer said. “I always liked to compete and be better than the guy across from me.”

Locher said: “He knows football. He cares about football. He understands receiver splits, and where he’s at on the field, and the situation in the game, like down-and-distance, field zone, things of that nature. Very high football IQ. That’s probably his greatest strength. But what he doesn’t do is keep it bottled inside. He shares that information with the other guys.”