Matthew Ma lost a brother but gained a hero.
Holding the helmet Marc Ma wore as an ‘Iolani defensive lineman, Matthew spoke about the impact his younger brother had on those around him up to and including his disappearance in a paddleboard accident last Friday on Lake Tahoe.
“I consider him my hero,” Matthew Ma said. “He’s not my baby brother anymore, he’s my hero now.
“I probably learned more from him in the last two days than he’s learned from me in his 20 years on Earth.”
Three days after Marc went missing during a paddleboard trip in Lake Tahoe and two since authorities declared the search a recovery effort, Ma reported to Oahu Country Club for his tee time in the 108th Manoa Cup’s qualifying round Monday morning.
He’d initially pulled out of the tournament upon receiving word of Marc’s disappearance. But decided on Sunday that playing would best honor his brother’s memory.
Marc Ma, a two-time ILH all-star at ‘Iolani, was poised for a breakout season as a sophomore at Nevada following a redshirt year and went to Lake Tahoe on Friday with some Wolf Pack teammates.
According to reports from the Placer County Sheriff’s Office, strong winds generated 3- to-5-foot swells and Marc Ma’s teammates were knocked off their boards. Ma went for help and disappeared in the rough waters while the rest of the party was rescued. The search was suspended on Saturday and Nevada coach Brian Polian issued a statement reading: “It is with an incredibly heavy heart that we acknowledge the loss of Marc Ma, a beloved member of our Wolf Pack family.”
Matthew was playing a practice round at OCC on Friday when he learned of Marc’s situation. After sleepless nights and wrestling over whether to play this week, he returned to the course on Monday with Marc’s ‘Iolani helmet in the back of his golf cart and his brother close to his heart.
“Marc was a competitor,” Ma said. “He knows what it’s like to compete and just the rigors of competition, and he would have wanted me to do the same.”
Ma said his family received “hundreds and hundreds” of calls and messages in the days following the accident.
“I know he had a lot of friends, but I didn’t know just how many lives he affected. It’s tremendous,” he said.
“It’s refreshing to hear there’s so many lives that he touched. That’s how he lived. … His legacy will be known for caring and helping people. Not just because he was a college football player who drowned in a tragic accident. We want everybody to know he lived by the word of God and he practiced it everyday and that’s who he was and he gave his life trying to help.”
Ma, the 2012 Manoa Cup champion, finished his round at 2-over-par 73, closing with an 18-foot birdie putt on No. 18, to make it into today’s round of 64 in the state amateur match-play championship. But the numbers faded into the background as fellow players, tournament officials and OCC members offered a handshake and a word of sympathy or encouragement.
Players pinned black ribbons on their caps in Marc’s honor and Tyler Ota, the defending Manoa Cup champion and a close friend, gave Ma a black Nike cap with “Marc Would Go” written along the base of the bill.
“That was the type of guy Marc was,” Ota said. “The whole Ma family, they’ll go above and beyond for you.
“It’s a big week, but at the same time it’s a bigger picture this week. I told him this week it’s not about us, but we’ll play inspired. Whether we win or not hopefully we make him proud.”
Ma’s parents, Michele and Michael, remain in Nevada while the recovery effort continues and the Nevada football team has a memorial service scheduled for Thursday in Reno to honor Marc, who graduated from ‘Iolani in 2014 and was driven to play Division I football.
“We talked to Coach Polian yesterday … and I really feel Marc was about to to do it. This was going to be the year he got on the field,” Ma said. “He was about to achieve everything that he worked for. But I think he achieved the one thing he cherished more than that, and that’s to become the man of God he is.”
Ota will be the top seed in the bracket as the defending champion and will face Noah Lau today at 6:30 a.m. Waiakea’s Shon Katahira and Baldwin’s Justin Ngan shared medalist honors on Monday with rounds of 69 to claim the next two spots.
Kyung Eun Lee earned the top seed in the Manoa Cup’s first women’s bracket with a round of 73. Recent Punahou graduate Aiko Leong is second in the eight-player bracket, which begins play on Wednesday.
