Analaine Mailoto said she was moving back to Weber County with her family last fall regardless of what was next for her in life.

The Fremont High and Southern Utah University alumna had spent the previous seven seasons as head volleyball coach at Union High in Roosevelt, where she coached the Cougars to three straight state championships.

Thanks to an open coaching position, happenstance and a “what the heck, why not?” job application, Mailoto will take the helm of the Silverwolves when they begin the 2022 season this summer.

“It’ll be fun and it’ll be, I probably would guess a surreal feeling, you know, when you walk back into the gym and you’re the coach instead of a player,” Mailoto said in a phone interview on Thursday.

“I’m excited. I think it’ll be a fun experience. You always hope for that, but I think it will be. The girls I’ve met so far, they seem like good people,” she said.

Fremont hired Mailoto back in December as its new volleyball coach — she’ll also teach classes — bringing in both an alumna and someone regarded as one of the better coaches in the state.

Mailoto was the head coach at 3A Union High for seven years, taking over a program that she said was in a pretty good spot.

By the time she left, she was leaving a three-time defending state champion program, just the 15th different prep volleyball in Utah to win three straight, according to the UHSAA record book.

In each state title game, Union beat perennial powerhouse Morgan — the teams played an epic, five-set match in 2019 — whose head coach, Liz Wiscombe, is someone Mailoto says she looks up to.

At Fremont, Mailoto will have somewhat of a rebuilding job on her hands as the Silverwolves graduated four of their top five hitters, including Nebraska-bound Maggie Mendelson and Oregon-bound Ayva Cebollero, the latter of whom was the team’s setter.

Last fall was actually the second time in three years Mailoto had applied for the Fremont job. She applied in 2019 … one day too late.

“I didn’t get offered to come in an interview (in 2019), which is fine. Everything works the way it’s supposed to. But then we won state that year at Union. I was like, ‘We’ll just do one more year,’ and then we won state that year. ‘Ok, just one more year,’ and then this year we won state again,” Mailoto said.

“Everything happens for a reason. I wouldn’t have those state titles — well maybe, I don’t know, who knows — but I wouldn’t have the opportunity with Union to (win) those state titles if I’d already moved.”

After the 2021 volleyball season, when Union completed the three-peat, Mailoto, her husband and the couple’s children moved back to Weber County to be closer to her family.

Then, the Fremont job opened up again. She applied for it, saying she wasn’t sure what she was going to do next.

“It opened up at the right time, like right when we moved here. What’s the chance of that happening?” Mailoto said.

Mailoto won’t be the only new head coach in Region 1 this fall. Both Layton and Farmington have new head coaches, with the Farmington job opening up within the past week.

Layton hired LHS and Weber State alumna Hannah DeYoung as its new head coach. DeYoung graduated from Layton in 2016, then played at Weber State as a middle blocker, starting three seasons from 2017-19.

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