HONOLULU -- From Lulu Lulu's perch on the upper floor of the hillside campus at Saint Louis School, the science teacher who has spent 23 years at this private all-boys school has a million-dollar view that sweeps from Diamond Head to Waikiki.

And it isn't the only thing that catches the eye -- along a wall's shelf sit small animals preserved in jars and varieties of fish in as many tanks.



But when the students take their seats at tables they face away from that stunning view, directly toward a white board instead. It's here where Lulu places one of his favorite possessions directly in his students' line of sight: A slightly dusty poster describing what it means to be a "Saint Louis Man," a 15-point mission statement of manhood with tenets such as, "matures into an exemplary person" and "makes moral choices," next to a photo of a teenaged student helping an elementary schooler tie his tie.



In black permanent marker, the teenaged student in the photo signed his name: "Mr. Lulu, Thank you for everything! -- Marcus Mariota."



Four years after Mariota graduated with its top individual honor -- the "Saint Louis Man" award that goes to the senior who best embodies its 15-point philosophy -- it is Saint Louis that is now telling Mariota a hearty "thank you!"



Mariota, the 2014 Heisman Trophy winner as the Oregon Ducks record-setting quarterback, is expected to be one of the first draft picks selected in the NFL draft on Thursday, an occasion he will celebrate not with a handshake from NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in Chicago, but surrounded by family at a Saint Louis alumni center.



Mariota famously avoids the spotlight. In turn, he's deflected plenty of it toward Saint Louis, the school he attended from middle school through graduation and thanked during his Heisman Trophy acceptance speech.



To answer one common joke, school leaders answer that, no, it will not be renamed "Saint Marcus" anytime soon.



But that doesn't mean a Mariota effect hasn't been felt at Saint Louis, founded in 1846. Applications for the 550-boy school for the 2015-16 school year are up 15 percent, said Alvin Katahara, the chief marketing officer.



"It hasn't been this up in a number of years," Katahara said. "We've got a whole lot more applications and I believe a lot of that is attributable to Marcus. I think the parents we're talking to are saying, 'I want my son to become a man like Marcus is, and they don't mean athletic because their sons aren't football players."



Mariota has been coming to the campus since middle school and remains closely in touch with school leaders and former teachers and coaches. His brother, Matt, who has been invited to walk-on to Oregon's program as an outside linebacker, is a senior. Mariota himself still works out in the school's nearly brand-new weight room next door to the football field, which sits in the shadow iconic Diamond Head. In late April, Mariota attended a luau celebrating his brother's senior class before being mobbed by well-wishers.



Assistant head of school Sione Thompson called Mariota the ideal face for the school given his credibility in the classroom as well as on the field.



"Saint Louis for a long time had a very strong reputation in athletics and not so much in academics, and I think Marcus brings that to the limelight to say we are a well-balanced academic institution with great athletes," said Thompson, a 1999 graduate and former University of Arizona receiver whose promotion to principal takes effect in July. "And our athletes are great students and amazing people."



It is not necessarily the case that the school is capitalizing on Mariota's growing fame.



Around Saint Louis, which abuts the Chaminade University campus where his parents, Toa and Alana, met, Mariota was always something of a big deal well before he started as the parochial football power's quarterback as a senior.





To Lulu, who has known Mariota since middle school and taught him Advanced Placement biology as a senior, the quarterback was held up as an example while he was still a student, well before he stood in a midtown Manhattan theatre in December and accepted Oregon's first Heisman Trophy (two other Saint Louis graduates, Herman Wedemeyer and Jason Gesser, also were Heisman finalists).



Lulu remembers most seeing Mariota seek out the loners or outliers in a group and befriending them. Mariota stopped one photoshoot in high school to fix the tie of a younger boy who couldn't get the knot right. That outtake became the photo that sits in Lulu's classroom, the same photo that graces much of the school's marketing materials.



"He used to come down and wait for Matthew when Matthew was fourth grade and if there was a little kid waiting outside he would sit there with that kid," Lulu said. "Next thing you know they're best friends.



"... You know how people always want to find a negative? Yeah, good luck."



Lulu, a big man with a quick laugh, gets an easy chuckle out of the notion that Mariota is considered "too nice" to succeed or lead in the NFL. He acknowledges that Mariota is by nature low-key and slow to raise his voice, but said that isn't the side his fellow teachers always remember: Mariota, it turned out, was skilled in debating and held his ground when defending a stance.



Lulu also organized a student group called LIFE, for "Living In Faith Experience." Mariota was not a full member of the group, but often arrived to share his beliefs in the early evenings after football practices, sometimes bringing Matthew -- and a growing crowd -- in tow.



"A lot of his friends followed," Lulu said. "It's like Jesus with the disciples."



And Saint Louis hopes many more follow one of its favorite sons -- and they believe Mariota is helping the effort. In April, Mariota's copy of the Heisman Trophy sat on display in the main hall on campus for younger Saint Louis students to feel and see. Administrators hope it is a tangible lesson for the current Crusaders.



"He's able to make the next guy feel important and welcome and show his true genuine side of being a brother and the brotherhood we have here," said Vinny Passas, a longtime football coach at Saint Louis who guided Mariota's development as a quarterback. "It really shows. It's contagious because when you are around guys like him, guys tend to act like him."



While a standing room-only crowd watched the Heisman ceremony from the on-campus theatre at Saint Louis, Thompson joined a small party of alumni who traveled to New York in December.



The victory has been considered a game-changer, one whose effects many on the islands hope will reverberate.



"I played with tons of polynesians in college and my phone didn't stop for about 48 hours with all my former teammates of Polynesian descent texting me, equating -- now of course it's not equal, it's different -- but to the first black president," Thompson said. "This is the first Polynesian to break the mold of being a quarterback and from the islands because it's not something typically we're known for."



That president, Barack Obama, graduated from Punahou, which like Saint Louis is a private school and athletic power whose campus is only minutes from the city center. Asked who he'd rather have be the face of the school, Thompson laughed, and called Obama's effect "historic."



But in this hypothetical debate, he knows where he stands.



"I'm a Marcus fan," Thompson said. "I love him to death. I wouldn't trade him for the world."



-- Andrew Greif

agreif@oregonian.com

503-221-8100

@andrewgreif