Tagaloa enjoys return to Beehive State

For many coaches and players in this year's Junior Olympic Girls Volleyball Tournament this visit to Utah is a first.

But for Charlene Tagaloa it's more like a homecoming.

The assistant coach at the University of Nebraska also coaches a 14-and-under club team that qualified for the Junior Olympic Girls Volleyball Tournament this week at the Salt Palace. She was excited when she found out where National would be held as she knows a little about the Beehive State.

"I was excited to come back to Utah," she said. "I just love it. It's such a beautiful area."

Although she grew up in Las Vegas, she finished high school at Pleasant Grove and then played volleyball for BYU. After she graduated from the Y., she headed Michigan to coach a team in a professional league.

"That league lasted only a year," she said. "Then John Cook from Nebraska called and said he had an opening for an assistant. I absolutely love it."

She said coaching the 14-year-old club players is quite a change from her usual duties at Nebraska.

"It's so different," she said with a laugh. "The collegiate level is the top, except for the Olympics, and there is such pressure there. The collegiate world is also more of a business world. As a coach I really wanted to shape and mold these players. I really wanted to do for these girls what other coaches had done for me. It's such a fun age."

Tagaloa knows the impact a good coach can have on a young athlete. She played club volleyball as a teenager in Utah and won the Junior Olympic title in her age division twice. She was named the MVP one of those years. After graduating from BYU, she also made the Olympic volleyball team and played on the U.S. team in the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney.

"It was such a great experience just to play here," she said of the Junior Olympic Tournament. "And it's changed so much. It's really grown, and I think it will just keep growing. I know we had less than 300 teams, and this has more than 700 teams. It's just amazing."

She said she had "phenomenal coaches" and although she never considered coaching until her playing days were winding down, she said it became a natural choice.

"I don't think anybody knows when they're playing that they want to coach," she said. "But then I thought, 'What else would I do? Go get a real job?' I've played volleyball my whole life. But I really just wanted to give back to the girls what other coaches gave me. I wanted to do the same things for them."

The mother of two girls, 14 months and almost 3 years old, and a 12-year-old boy, Tagaloa said playing volleyball offers so many more lessons than how to win.