Ferd Lewis: Ex-Waipahu coach takes surreal route to West Point

The large map of Hawaii island and the Hawaii state flag occupying prominent places on his office wall serve as daily reminders of the circuitous career path that brought Sean Saturnio more than 5,000 miles to be an assistant football coach at Army.

“It is kind of surreal,” Saturnio says. “You grow up watching the Army-Navy game and, as a kid from the Big Island, never in a million years do you imagine you’ll end up (coaching) at such a place as West Point. It is truly humbling.”

This week that journey prompts additional pause for reflection as his alma mater, the University of Hawaii, arrives for Saturday’s game.

When he graduated from UH in 1992, Saturnio hardly dared to imagine he’d be a college football coach, let alone one at the U.S. Military Academy.

A Hilo High graduate, an unused walk-on wide receiver at UH after transferring from Beloit College, Saturnio returned home after graduation to teach for a while on the Big Island. Later he taught at Waipahu Elementary and Waipahu High while working his way up from an assistant coach on the junior varsity to nine-year varsity head coach, leading the Marauders to six postseason appearances, including two OIA Division II championships.

It was only upon taking a sabbatical, and at the suggestion of a UH friend, Georgia Southern head coach Jeff Monken, that he said he even considered college coaching. And that $700-a-month graduate student position with the Eagles was intended to be brief, a six-month interlude before returning to the DOE.

Instead, just before he was to step back into the classroom, Monken called with a full-time job offer after an 11th hour opening on the staff developed. Then, three seasons later, Monken brought him along to help change the football fortunes at Army.

Theirs was a friendship borne of late nights in the UH football offices. Saturnio, a student assistant in the weight room, would go there to write his papers on the computers since he didn’t have one of his own. Monken, a football graduate assistant who burned the midnight oil, would let him in. Afterward they would talk into the night.

“On spring vacation he would come home with me and stay with my family on the Big Island,” Saturnio said.

Now, Saturnio is eight years into helping coach what was in 2017 the No. 1 rushing offense in the NCAA’s Football Bowl Subdivision.

Under a poster that declares, “Aloha served daily,” Saturnio tries to instill more than the fundamentals of the triple option in his players. The former Hawaiian Studies teacher explains the flag on the wall to his players and quizzical first-time visitors who take it for British. He invites them to sit down and briefly visit Hawaii “through some Hawaiian music.”

Saturnio says, “I figure if I’m the only person from Hawaii that they ever meet, then I want them to have a good impression and know something of our culture.”

He also counsels soon-to-graduate cadets that, “Sometime during your Army career you have to get a posting to Hawaii or you’re crazy. You have to experience Hawaii, it will change your life.”

Saturnio says, “I root for UH. I’m glad they’re doing so well. I know when UH does well the mood of the islands raises up as well. I’ll root for them every week — except this one.”

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.