Navy quarterback Kaipo-Noa Kaheaku-Enhada needed a 5,100-mile trip from Hawaii to Rhode Island to realize his life was no longer a day at the beach.

“It really hit me when I first walked into the building,” he said of his first day at the Naval Academy Preparatory School in Newport. “People were flying around, and I had a chief yelling at me. I was like, ‘Wow, this is real.’ ”