All-Area TOTY: Young Fremont proved it belonged with the best of them this fall
Fremont is the 2025 All-Area Girls Volleyball Team of the Year
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- Fremont High middle hitter Addie Funk (9) celebrates a point with her teammates, including Mia McArthur (2), on Thursday, Aug. 7, 2025, in Plain City.
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- Fremont head volleyball coach Analaine Mailoto, left, and senior Atley Mitchell (right, black) reset during a timeout vs. Layton during the second round of the 6A Girls Volleyball State Tournament Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024, at the UCCU Center at Utah Valley University in Orem.
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- Fremont High’s Kylee Harper rises to meet the ball in a girls volleyball match against Weber on Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2025, in Plain City.
PLAIN CITY — Fremont High girls volleyball took the next big step in 2025 with the program’s best finish since 2020, and the best of alum-turned-coach Analaine Mailoto’s four seasons as head coach.
Improving by nine wins from a year ago, Fremont wrapped its best campaign in recent memory at 28-4 with its appearance in a state semifinal since that pandemic-laden season. They’d notch the No. 2 seed in their first 5A tournament since offseason realignment.
Skyline, the No. 3 seed in this year’s playoff, stopped Fremont short of the state title match 3-1 in Orem this October, denying the Silverwolves’ first title appearance since the school’s doors opened in 1994.
Fremont ultimately finished fourth at state following a 2-0 loss vs. No. 5 Pleasant Grove in the third-place finale. A third-place finish in 2007 remains the program’s all-time high.
“Every year we get closer and closer,” Mailoto said. “It’s a new experience, so it’s something we’re going to build off of, and we wouldn’t be able to do that without them.”
Two seniors, middle blockers Addie Funk and Maya Jensen, amassed 58 combined blocks along Fremont’s front line, and All-Area First Team outside hitter Olivia Surrage, a junior, tallied a team-high 326 kills (6th in 5A), 61 aces (8th in 5A), and 200 digs.
Junior libero Daphnie Moyes, recording a team-high 336 digs (8th in 5A), and junior right-side hitter Mia McArthur, tallying a team-high 66 serving aces (6th in 5A), were equally crucial in proving Fremont’s best mark in four years.
Buying in is one thing, but Fremont’s fledgling underclassmen proved themselves capable of such a leap on the floor this fall, Jensen said.
“I think all of the younger girls worked really hard and wanted to be there,” Jensen said. “They’re a talented, younger group, so I don’t think that it really affected us as much.”
Together, Fremont produced its eighth region title (2025, 2020, 2019, 2015, 2014, 2007, 1997, 1996) with a 12-0 run in its first season in Region 5.
It’s hardly a one-off, either. The Silverwolves have been gearing up for their return to form for a while.
Mailoto, lured away from 3A Union High School in late 2021, when the Cougars were three-time defending state champions, arrived at Fremont on the heels of 12 consecutive winning seasons under five different coaches since 2010.
But state championships don’t happen overnight, and semifinal appearances aren’t the end-all to what Mailoto, a former player herself at Fremont and a 2025 addition to Southern Utah’s Athletics Hall of Fame for volleyball, wants for her alma mater.
“I think it’s a standard we work towards,” Mailoto said of the program’s recent successes. “When I first got it here, it wasn’t that way. It was very sensitive and separate at times, and there was some bullying that happened and stuff like that. The first two years, we had to really work with that, and now it’s just natural.”
Mailoto’s first two teams won just 15 combined matches before returning to winning status with a 19-10 campaign as the Region 1 runner-up in 2024.
Funk and Jensen, who’ve each stayed with the program since arriving as freshmen amid Mailoto’s first season, ended up as the only seniors to return to the roster this fall.
“You’ve got to give up how you want to play and play for the team instead of playing for yourself,” Funk said.
So, while Fremont will sign away its two seniors, both uncommitted at this time, they’ve helped their team set the tone for perhaps the brightest years ahead.
Some players leave titles, others leave the foundation.
“As seniors, they had easy jobs this year,” Mailoto said. “I feel like, as their coach, our seniors were super positive for the girls, and so they had good people to look up to.”
Connect with prep sports reporter Conner Becker via email at cbecker@standard.net and X @ctbecker.
