FROM HAWAII PREP WORLD, JULY 16, 2019

Editor’s note: Carvalho’s hiring as the new Saint Louis football coach comes on the heels of a fifth-place finish for American Samoa under his guidance at the flag football world championships. This story revisits his earlier years.

Long before Sterling Carvalho became a football coach, he was a quarterback at Kauai High with a knack for deceiving defenses while running the option offense.

But some of the most important lessons he took from his playing days had little to do with what happened on field.