Hilo boy Sean Saturnio thought he was going to be Waipahu’s head football coach for his whole career.
But it didn’t happen. Instead, he somehow made things click with one of the United States’ service academies.
The former University of Hawaii football player’s life changed when a former Rainbow Warriors graduate assistant coach asked him to come and be an assistant at Georgia Southern. That man, Jeff Monken, then brought Saturnio along with him when he took over as the head coach for the Army Black Knights.
And that’s where Saturnio has been in various roles since the 2014 season. It’s been an exciting and fulfilling time. The Black Knights are off to a 2-1 start in 2020, the COVID-19 season.
“It’s amazing where I ended up,” Saturnio said by phone last week. “Growing up on the Big Island and ending up at West Point — only God could have orchestrated that.”
One major highlight for the former Waipahu head coach came in 2016, when Army stopped a skid of 14 losses in a row against arch-rival Navy.
“That’s when we finally got the monkey off our backs,” Saturnio said. “My third year there and I got to see just how much it meant for the families of the corps cadets and the players and former players when they stormed off the field.”
Saturnio has been a part of two Commander In Chief trophy-winning teams. That award goes to the top winner among the three Division I FBS service academies.
“And being able to actually go to White House and sit in the Rose Garden,” he said about another of the big moments he’s experienced with the U.S. Military Academy. “Never in a million years did I think that I, a Hilo boy, would go to the White House not having to pay for a tour but get invited. That was something that was unbelievably special.”
Saturnio, the Black Knights’ special teams coordinator, has also been a part of three bowl game championship teams in his time at Army.
“It’s a great testament to the leadership coach Monken brings and what the kids believe in and have invested in,” Saturnio said. “The word brotherhood is thrown out all over the place (to describe close-knit sports teams). But we have players from 32 states and that truly makes us America’s team.”
Former Saint Louis School player Isaiah Filisi, a 6-foot-3, 280-pound defensive lineman from Waipahu, is the only Hawaii player on the Army roster this season.
“I look back at my time getting to coach in a wonderful place in the islands and that makes it one of the motivating things as well,” he added. “Islanders everywhere know we represent far more than ourselves and our families. We have pride growing up in the islands and so when we get an opportunity like this, we make the absolute most of it. It helps open doors for generations that follow. This has been a privelege.”
From Sabbatical To Full-Time Job
In the fall of 2011, Saturnio went on a six-month sabbatical from his job as a teacher at Waipahu to work with Monken in a player development role at Georgia Southern. He was also a full-time grad school student at the time. But Instead of going back to Waipahu, Monken hired Saturnio, who spent 2012 and ’13 as a full-time assistant.
“Our last game as a staff before coach took the job at Army, we went down to the Swamp and beat Florida,” Saturnio said.
Being part of the annual Army-Navy extravaganza is surreal, according to Saturnio.
“Being part of that game, you can watch all videos you want and read all books, but nothing prepares you for what the experience is like,” he said. “That game means so much to so many people. It’s not regional, it’s not just the country, but all of the world.”
Bringing Part Of the Islands To West Point
Saturnio tries to bring a little Hawaii sunshine and wisdom to his players.
“I do my very best during times in camp to share different stories, attach some relevance from the islands and how they can connect to that in different ways,” the coach said. “At this year’s camp, we talked about the ancient navigators that (probably) came from the Marquesas Islands to Hawaii and they did it from memorizing the sky. They were reading the clouds and the animals and feeling the swells of the waves. And when they couldn’t see the stars (because of clouds), they learned to trust what they were heading toward, knowing it’s still there. What a wonderful example of faith. In life, there’s not always going to be pristine waters. You’re going to have adversity. You gotta trust that you’ve trained for it.
“For most of them, Hawaiian history is a blip in the books. They really have no idea how rich the history is and how deep it is.”
(Photo from Twitter).
When Saturnio was the head coach for the Waipahu Marauders, one of his quarterbacks was Bryson Carvalho, who is the current head coach and who led the Marauders to the Division I (middle tier) state championship in 2018.
“Of course I am very happy about Waiaphu’s accomplishment,” said Saturnio, who was the Marauders’ head coach from 2002 through 2010 and was an assistant for two years before that. “I’m so proud of Bryson and the kids there. The time I spent there, I enjoyed. If I didn’t get the call to move, I could have stayed there until I retired. I love the place and the people and I love the kids.”
As an Army assistant now, Saturnio has had some A-plus moments.
“Ultimately, the head coach has the final decision, but we had a 47-yard fake punt that the kids executed,” he said. “We scouted it and got a certain look that we wanted to see. I called over to Jeff on the headset and said, ‘Hey, this is there.’ I’ve worked with coach Monken for so long, even when he was a graduate assistant (in 1989) at UH. I knew he was going to be head coach some day.”
That 1989 season with his football playing days behind him, Saturnio (a 1985 Hilo High grad) was a student assistant working in the weight room and he ended up talking with Monken late into the nights. A friendship had begun. A career path for Saturnio — a former Rainbow Warriors walk-on slotback — was already sort of being formulated.
‘Invested’ Army Players Are Off To A Fast Start
After beating Middle Tennessee 42-0 and Louisiana Monroe 37-7, Army suffered its first defeat of 2020 against Cincinnati, 24-10, last Saturday. A ranking of 22nd in the country was swept away.
But Saturnio knows it’s about more than winning. He also knows the team is fortunate to be playing during the pandemic.
“We’ve got a team that’s invested in each other,” he said. “We were one of the first couple of teams to get back on campus in early June. We were working out and going through the protocols. It was crazy to start with — four huge pods of the team broken up for one week. We started with masks. We slept in the athletic complex in four huge locations. Then it went down to two pods from four. We still couldn’t do the physical stuff together because of the protocols. But we had to go through that investment together and it was such a wonderful vibe.
“The George Floyd protests were going on and that allowed our team to get closer with discussions on social issues that people don’t normally talk about. It sparked things across the country. For us, it added more depth. We have kids from diverse backgrounds and social classes and ethnicity. We have inner city kids, country kids, urban kids, all with different perspectives. They all heard first-hand from their brothers of what all of their lives were like. They discussed topics with open hearts and open minds and they will become great leaders. It added another facet in their tool belts. They will be leading America’s sons and daughters.”
