Won’t you be my neighbor? New football coaches welcome Northern Utah’s new Region 5
Old friends stay that way; neighboring schools revamp history in latest realignment
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- Northridge’s Andrew Ortiz, right, tries to a scoop up a loose ball against Box Elder on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, in Layton.
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- Roy players Ryan Foss (10), Carter Rudolph (77) and Hank Mullen (72) line up for a snap against Viewmont in a 5A state quarterfinal Friday, Nov. 8, 2024, in Roy.
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- West Field’s Hinckley Keele (2) is swarmed by Logan tacklers Austin Birch (10) and Raiden Nielson (34) on Friday, Sept. 13, 2024, in Taylor.
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- Seguin (Texas) head coach Joe Gordon(front row, #1) Northridge assistant Kitt Rawlings (back row, #6) pictured with longtime college football coach Bob Stoops (back row, left) and the rest of the 1993 Kansas State football team’s defensive backs.
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- Roy head football coach Chris Solomona looks to the field during a 5A semifinal against Timpview on Friday, Nov. 15, 2024, at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City.
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- Roy mascot Reggit waves a flag during the 5A state championship football game on Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024, at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City.
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- Bonneville’s Ashton Spackman catches a pass against Alta during a 5A first-round playoff game Friday, Oct. 25, 2024, in Washington Terrace.
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- Box Elder’s Cole Bushnell runs the football against Northridge on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, in Layton.
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- The Clearfield sideline looks on during a road game at Roy Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, in Roy.
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- Fremont quarterback Manase Tuatagaloa (5) eyes a pass with Zach Masters in the foreground in a game against Syracuse on Friday, Oct. 4, 2024, in Plain City.
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- Northridge’s Tre Nye (3) leads his team onto the field before a game against Roy on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024, in Layton.
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- West Field’s Caymen Kap (6) celebrates an onside kicke recovery against Logan on Friday, Sept. 13, 2024, in Taylor.
The latest round of realignment provides a handful of Northern Utah coaches in Region 5 with one of the more logistically sound pictures they’ve been a part of during their careers. New kingpins and region hopefuls alike showered the new-look region with preseason praise.
Doing away with Bountiful, Viewmont and Woods Cross — three schools within 20 minutes of downtown Salt Lake City via Interstate 15 — the region added co-Region 1 football champion Fremont and newly opened West Field to its membership beginning this school year.
The UHSAA revisits its realignment process every two years, and this latest edition renews a handful of rivalries in the process as Region 5 goes from eight schools to seven.
Fremont — dropping to 5A, the school’s first foray into something other than the state’s largest classification — returns five pre-pandemic neighbors: Bonneville, Box Elder, Clearfield, Northridge and Roy.
West Field, which pulled students away from Fremont and Roy upon opening its doors in Region 11 last fall, will have those region neighbors on the schedule upon punching up from 4A.
For Northridge coach Andrew Fresques, the outcome was about as predictable as punting on fourth-and-long.
“You never know how realignment is going to go,” Fresques said. “I kept hearing it’s either going to be the same, or we’d lose the Bountiful schools. … It’s going to be competitive, it’s another gauntlet of a region where you can’t sleep on any of those opponents.”
The region’s longest commute — Brigham City (Box Elder) to Layton (Northridge) — checks in at 35 miles. (In the previous alignment, Box Elder to Woods Cross was 50 miles.)
Regardless, Northridge and sixth-year head man Fresques (who returns 14 starters from last year’s 7-5 team) will make arguably the longest non-region road trek of any Utah program with a Week 2 litmus test at Juan Seguin High School in Arlington, Texas.
The groundwork for the interstate battle originated through Northridge defensive coordinator Kitt Rawlings, who shared the defensive back room with Seguin head coach Joe Gordon at Kansas State during the early 1990s. In 1993, Rawlings and Gordon were part of the first nationally-ranked KSU program since 1970.
“This was a great opportunity with them,” Fresques said. “Their head coach was teammates with (Rawlings), and they’re opening up a brand new stadium. It seemed like a really good fit for us, where we like we can compete. … It’s a great experience for our guys, playing in a stadium that holds tens of thousands of people, and for them to see what football is like outside of Utah.”
Roy, the 5A state runner-up under the command of Chris Solomona, and a resurgent Fremont guided by Nate Tuatagaloa, join Northridge atop the region food chain.
Unlike his neighbors, Solomona nearly led a 12-2 Royals program to its first state championship in nearly half a century. But the defending Region 5 co-champion Royals return almost none of last year’s production, and only three starters return on defense.
Solomona does regain a familiar colleague in Eric Jones, who brings West Field into a more regional fit after ushering in a Longhorns’ inaugural football season that frequently played 2024 games in Cache County. Solomona and Jones shared the Fred Fernandes staff at Roy during the 2010s and now share a region as head coaches.
“That’s as good of a human out there in the coaching world as you could ever ask for,” Jones said of Solomona. “Coaching with him for years at Roy was awesome, so being on the opposite sideline from him now is going to be different. But he’s a good guy to compete against because of the way he operates.”
It’ll be Solomona’s fourth season as head coach at Roy while Jones gears up for his fourth season as a head coach and second at West Field. Beginning his tenure in 2022, Jones went 16-9 at Bingham before leaping into the new program in Taylor, returning the Roy alum to Weber County.
Jones and the Longhorns finished 1-10 last season, but one could argue the program’s challenges stemmed from a bit more than merely being a new team. Delayed construction of school facilities booted summer and preseason practices to neighboring high school and junior high fields, and forced West Field’s “home opener” with Bonneville to Washington Terrace.
Starting up amid realignment didn’t necessarily help, either. The Longhorns picked up a 27-14 region win over Logan (now dropping down as a member of 3A’s Region 13) as the season highlight.
“I think the biggest adjustment, honestly, for the kids coming to us from Fremont, from Roy, that hadn’t played a lot of games against those Cache Valley teams, (was) not knowing how good the talent really is up there,” Jones said. “I feel pretty strongly that the Cache Valley region, those teams, could come down here and compete well with anybody in Davis and Weber County. I thought it was really high-quality football up there and a whole bunch of good talent.”
Jones is one of five Region 5 head coaches in the first or second year in charge of their programs. Another is Carson Mund, second-year head coach at Box Elder; the Brigham City school is located 20 miles north of its closest Region 5 neighbor (Fremont) as the only real outlier in the geographically sound new alignment. North to south, the other six schools sit within a footprint of approximately 20 miles.
But it’s not just geography that has coaches perked up for the season.
“I think having (Tuatagaloa) and (Jones) in the region is a great shake-up,” Mund said. “They’re a great addition as coaches in our region.”
Box Elder and Fremont last shared a region a quarter century ago, before Utah adopted the six classifications and well before the internet made finding such information a breeze. That region also included Bonneville, Roy and Weber, the latter of which now sits as an outlier in Region 1 with Fremont’s move to Region 5.
Fremont was the newest Weber County high school upon opening in 1994 before West Field became operational last fall. Mund, a 2010 graduate of Box Elder, is ready to bring that “natural rivalry” from the Silverwolves’ early history back into the fray.
“It became quite a game (and) quite a rivalry year in and year out,” Mund said. “There are natural rivalries being made now in region that I don’t think existed as much because of the distance between Davis County and us, things like that.”
The timing of Fremont’s move adds another layer to Tuatagloa’s ongoing rebuild, which took a massive first step with an 8-4 finish and a share of the Region 1 season title in the coach’s first season. He’ll return several important seniors, including highly sought-after five-star athlete Salesi Moa and his versatile quarterback son Manase Tuatagaloa, ahead of a highly anticipated second run.
Fremont’s non-region slate leaves little room for error, though. The Silverwolves kick things off against Weber State alum Mo Cannon with rival Weber, hit the road again in Week 2 at Davis, and finally open their home schedule with defending 6A state champion Corner Canyon in Week 3.
Cannon’s Warriors were two scores shy of Tuatagaloa and Fremont during a 35-21 region decision for the Silverwolves last October. Finishing 7-5 overall that season, Cannon finds himself in a similar situation to Tuatagloa this fall, eyeing an improved record in a condensed Region 1.
“It’s very important,” Tuatagaloa said of the Fremont-Weber rivalry. “Ever since Fremont opened, they’ve always played each other every year. It’s just one of those fun rivalries. (Cannon)’s a good dude and Weber’s lucky to have a guy like Mo. It’s fun to get the competitive juices going.
“But all these kids, that’s what they look forward to. They look forward to beating Weber, they look forward to beating West Field, or beating all these schools around us that’ve now kind of consolidated now to this region.”
Geographic rivalries remain possible regardless of what the region picture looks like two, four, and six years from now. It’s ultimately up to coaches when or whether they’re played if the new region full of rivals doesn’t stay together. But for now, Region 5 has several teams lining up existing or new rivals as region foes while keeping up games with non-region rivals as well.
The departure of Bountiful, Viewmont, and WX for the Salt Lake-centric Region 6 opens a few doors competitively for the remaining Region 5 schools to challenge Region 1 in the conversation of Northern Utah’s best football region. Davis, Farmington and Fremont were the only programs with 3-plus region wins in a six-team Region 1 last fall.
Region 1 drops to just five schools this fall, sharing that low total with Utah Valley’s Region 3; the 6A classification is comprised of only 17 schools. The state’s smallest football region, 1A South, features just four schools.
Elsewhere, the expansive 3A North football region includes Ben Lomond, Ogden and Morgan locally, with Union and Grantsville in the fold, and adding Logan upon Juan Diego’s jump to 4A.
Connect with reporter Conner Becker via email at cbecker@standard.net and X @ctbecker.
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