Fremont High made a splashy hire for its new football head coach. The school introduced Ben Lomond assistant coach Nate Tuatagaloa to the football team on Tuesday morning after Tuatagaloa accepted the job Monday.

“I’m excited. It’s one of those where you get to coach on a bigger stage, I get to assemble my own staff and kind of prove what we have here up north,” he told the Standard-Examiner.

As for his plans for the program? They’re lofty.

“Not everybody’s guaranteed to play at the next level, but we have an opportunity to impact these kids to make them become better citizens, fathers, brothers, sons, all those good deals,” Tuatagaloa said. “And our ultimate goal from a football standpoint is to be the premier school up north and eventually work our way to be one of the premier schools in the state.”

In a program that hasn’t had a winning season since 2019, part of how Tuatagaloa intends to get to that point is to get heavily involved with the youth leagues and Fremont feeder schools, and get those kids excited to play at Fremont.

“That’s the only approach that we can honestly take,” he said. “A lot of people always talk to me about the kids transferring and I’m always like, I can’t control transfers in as much as I can transfers out, but what I can control is our feeder schools and how we can help develop those kids as well.”

The departure of Tuatagaloa from Ben Lomond — he’s expected to teach PE at Fremont starting in January — is large. Tuatagaloa played a hands-on role for the Scots the last three years, calling the offense and, at times, the defense.

Out-of-boundary players represented the overwhelming majority of the Scots’ starters the last two seasons, and many transferred to Ben Lomond from neighboring Fremont and Weber boundaries to play for Tuatagaloa.

His son, Manase, just finished his second year as BL’s starting quarterback (and linebacker). He completed 65% of his passes and threw for 2,869 yards as a sophomore. The Scots went 6-5 this year, hosted their first playoff game since 1983 and had their first winning season since 2000.

The Scots ran a mostly singleback offense with four or five wide receivers, and a hybrid 3-3/4-2 defense with an edge rusher. Tuatagaloa is unsure whether he’ll call Fremont’s offense or defense, but says he expects to coordinate one side of the ball.

Connect with reporter Patrick Carr via email at pcarr@standard.net, Twitter @patrickcarr_ and Instagram @standardexaminersports.

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