Maybe it was fate.

Three days after John Weston accepted a teaching position with Oak Harbor High School, Wildcat head basketball coach Mike Washington resigned. Shortly after, Weston was named the new coach.

“Getting a head coaching job and teaching job at the same school has been a dream of mine for a long time,” Weston said.

“I feel very blessed the way the stars seemed to align,” Weston added. “I had such favor to have everything work out the way it did; to have my career goal come true so quickly in such a great community.”

Weston, a 2001 Olympia High School graduate, received his teaching degree from Western Washington University last spring and sought an open position in Oak Harbor because of a fondness for the area.

Weston’s wife Noelle (Nesmith) is an Oak Harbor native and her parents and one sister still live in the area.

“We have spent a lot of time in the community over the past six years, and we really love it here,” Weston said.

Weston is heading into his 13th season of coaching; this is his first as a high school head coach.

After graduating from Olympia, he coached the school’s AAU feeder team for sixth- through eighth-graders, then he was an assistant coach at Black Hills High School for one year.

Weston moved to Bellingham in 2006 and worked as an assistant coach at Mount Baker High School for five years and at Bellingham High School for three.

“Having a connection with this community since I met my wife, I have always followed what Oak Harbor boys basketball has done in Wesco,” Weston said. “I know coach Washington did a good job of building the program and making it competitive and successful.”

Weston said he is going to take “the successful pieces from each program” he worked with as an assistant and mold them into his own coaching style.

He expects to play an up-tempo style with “hard-nose defense and an emphasis on quick ball movement that gives all five guys an opportunity to contribute.”

Weston wants his teams to be known for their “gritty tenacity and disciplined teamwork.”

A key to his coaching philosophy, Weston said, is to positively “impact my guys to become good men.”

“Becoming successful off the court as adults, citizens, fathers, husbands, etc. is far more important to me than their success on the court,” he said.

One of his goals is to have his team get involved in community service and in the youth program.

“I would hope that the young men in our program always display integrity, and that they genuinely want to give back to their community; that they want to serve others without needing any sort of recognition or reciprocity,” he said.

Weston and the Wildcats began practice last week and open the season at 7:15 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 2, when Edmonds-Woodway visits.