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UMass center Matt Sparks in for the long haul

There was a reason Matt Sparks made the conscious decision to leave Hawaii and visit Amherst in the middle of January two years ago.

“I came in the middle of winter when it was, like, 30 degrees outside,” he said. “So people thought I was crazy.”

He had sent schools his game tape, showing them all the dirty work he’d done on the offensive line at Punahou School in Honolulu.

He knew which schools had shown interest. But he also had interests of his own.

A place where people honeymoon was his home. A part of him wanted to see more.

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“I knew what I was looking for in a school besides just football,” Sparks said. “I really wanted something different. I wanted to be able to go out — maybe no so far is what I was originally thinking — but I wanted to be able to go out and experience something new.”

Coaches from the University of Hawaii had always kept an eye on him, since Punahou was only a 15-minute drive away.

The Rainbows offensive coordinator Nick Rolovich built an especially close relationship.

When Rolovich flirted with the possibility of taking a job as the UMass offensive coordinator, suddenly 5,000 miles didn’t seem so far away.

“I really got to know him,” Sparks said. “My high school is right down the road from there. So I went to all their games and they visited and I really got to know those coaches. Then when he came here, I was comfortable with him and he helped me be comfortable with the school too, because we were both going far away from home.”

Rolovich ultimately passed on the UMass job for a chance to become the OC at Nevada.

But Sparks was still drawn to UMass. It was a program with a goal that seemed as far away as he was — transitioning to the Football Bowl Subdivision. He had conversations with former coach Charley Molnar, and he bought in.

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The direct flight from Hawaii is about 13 hours, but Sparks took it in the hopes he’d be a part of building something from the ground up at Amherst.

“It was one of the big reasons why I chose UMass over other schools,” Sparks said. “I wanted to be able, after I graduate from here, to look back on it and know I watched the program grow and know that I had something to do with that. Like, I helped to set it in that direction.”

Nothing about it has come easy so far. In Sparks’s two seasons, the Minutemen have won two games. They opened the season last week with an in-state battle against Boston College, and went back to Amherst with a 30-7 loss.

But the 6-foot-4-inch, 280-pound center has been a constant presence on the line since becoming a starter last season.

“I knew it was going to be hard at first, it was going to be a tough transition moving up to FBS,” Sparks said. “It’s just been good to see how our team has matured since we got in here and all the improvement that we’ve made from the first day I got here until now. We’re a very different team and I love watching it every day.”

A year ago, Sparks started 11 of 12 games, leading a line that gave up the fifth fewest sacks in the Mid-American Conference. As a junior, he’s the veteran on a front line where three starters are underclassmen.

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“He’s the leader up front,” said coach Mark Whipple. “We’re trying to get him to be more of a leader since we’re so young up front with two sophomore tackles and the young guys around him. It kind of all starts down the middle and him being the center, he’s the one guy that’s got some experience on the offensive line the last year.

“He’s a smart guy and he can really be more of an asset than just a good player, but just kind of a guy that they rally around and we’re excited to have him for the next two years.”

It’s a role Sparks embraces. He isn’t a yeller, he’s more of a problem-solver, talking teammates through mistakes rather than dwelling on them.

“I really enjoy that role,” Sparks said. “They’re very, very talented people and I want to try and guide them in the right direction and help them achieve what I know that they can do. That’s really, really fun for me to just see how good they are and how much better I can try to help them out to be.”

This spring, when the Minutemen brought in transfer quarterback Blake Frohnapfel, Sparks was one of the first people to reach out, guiding him on his official visit.

Around the time Frohnapfel committed, Sparks was looking for an off-campus apartment along fellow linemen Fabian Hoeller and Josh Bruns. He asked Frohnapfel if he wanted to move in, too.

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“It’s really, really important,” Sparks said. “We spend so much time together. We’ve got to be on the same page for everything, football-wise and just getting to know each other at the level we do now has really helped with that.”

With UMass set to face Colorado Saturday, Sparks will see some familiar faces. Offensive lineman Kaiwi Crabb and linebacker K.T. Tu’umalo both played with Sparks at Punahou.

“That’s always fun for me, playing against people that I’ve played before or people that I know,” Sparks said. “I’m a competitive guy and I know they’re very competitive too. So we’re going to be out there just trying to get the best of each other for bragging rights when we go back home.”

He said he hadn’t talked with them leading up to the game, but plans to chat them up on the field.

His focus this week was the same as when he came to Amherst two years ago, and he knows it’s still a work in progress.

“I can feel it, and I know what I want,” Sparks said. “I just want the culture to be different, where people are expecting to be winning, expecting to be good, and have fun. The fans have that expectation for us, not like expecting us to go 1-11. I’m expecting the team to be good and just being able to look at them and be proud that that’s the legacy we left behind.”

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Julian Benbow can be reached at jbenbow@globe.com.