Maui High School’s new head football coach said he operates by a simple slogan: “No talk, no excuse, get it done!”

“I believe in walking out there and (not saying) a word, and you beat people on the field and point at the scoreboard in the end,” said Robert Dougherty.

The former Boston University quarterback is the eighth head coach at Maui High since the school’s winningest coach, Curtis Lee, retired in 2004.

“It’s a tremendous opportunity here, and I’m looking forward to being part of the Saber family and building on some of the traditions that Coach Lee started,” said Dougherty, 47, when he was introduced to the media last month.

Meanwhile, the Maui High School community is looking forward to seeing whether their new coach can help the Sabers rebound from 2019’s disappointing 0-9 season. Dougherty also was just officially hired as an upper-level PE teacher at the Kahului campus where nearly 2,100 students are enrolled, making it the largest public school in Maui County.

“We think Robert’s a gem, and we are excited about the upcoming football season,” said Maui High School Principal Jamie Yap, who is related to this columnist. “We want to help support him and embrace him, and hopefully he can help us grow our young men into good young men and hopefully good football players, too.”

Maui High athletic director Michael Ban added, “His core values of education, attitude and hard work are going to elevate our program to a level of competition that is successful.”

Dougherty has a master’s degree in sports coaching and taught PE and coached football in Visalia, Calif., in the San Joaquin Valley close to Farmersville, the small agricultural community where he grew up. He moved to Maui six years ago with his family to replace longtime Seabury Hall athletic director Steve Colflesh.

Dougherty’s wife, the former Allison Rawe, was born here and as a youth picked pineapple at the Haliimaile plantation, eventually advancing on to driving a truck for Maui Land & Pineapple Co. The couple has four children: Makena, 20, Maile, 18, Maddy, 16, and Sands, 11.

“I don’t think he connected with how much he loved Maui until we moved here,” said Allison, who graduated from Seabury Hall in 1991 and has a master’s degree in physical therapy. “Robert has built a ton of relationships over the years on the mainland and here as well.”

The two first met when Allison was asked to tutor his roommate at Boston University. Three years later she brought Dougherty to Maui for the first time.

“I thought it was going to be just beaches,” he said about his first trip here in 1996, fresh out of college. “Then I went Upcountry, and I was like, wow, this does remind me of where I grew up.”

After a stint in the Canadian Football League and a year in the NFL’s Europe league playing for the Barcelona Dragons, who won the 1997 World Bowl Championship, Dougherty married Allison and they moved to Visalia. Dougherty coached and taught PE at three high schools over 10 years before taking a coaching position at College of the Sequoias in 2009. He spent five seasons there, the last two as head coach.

Under Dougherty’s watch at Seabury Hall from 2013 to last spring, the Spartans won 13 Hawaii High School Athletic Association championships. The private school released Dougherty in June with no explanation, and he filed a lawsuit in September for unlawful termination, claiming the action was in retaliation for concerns he raised about alleged personal misconduct between Seabury’s then-headmaster, who has since left the school, and another administrator, and about overcrowding in PE classes.

Seabury Hall has denied his claims but declined to comment further on the pending litigation.

“Thanks to a very supportive and loving family, I think that’s what gets people through tough times in life,” he told the media at his hiring announcement.

“I am very happy. Coaching never left my blood. I’ve coached for most of my career at lots of different levels and have always loved it. So I am very excited about this new opportunity, at a new school, with a very supportive staff. I believe it was meant to be.”

Last week Dougherty was adjusting to his new class schedule and meeting students for the first time.

“I’m just taking it all in right now, learning about the school, learning the culture and how things work,” he said.

Rodney S. Yap has been covering Maui sports for more than 30 years. Email him at ryap2019@gmail.com.