Latino Excellence chat with Texas’ Elena Lovato

University of Texas women’s basketball associate head coach Elena Lovato is the top Latino coach at the 2025 Final Four, men’s or women’s.  

Her Longhorns will face South Carolina on Friday night in Tampa, Fla., in a national semifinal game.

Lovato, a native of Albuquerque, N.M., is in her third season as the associate head coach on Vic Schaefer’s staff. She also served one season as Texas’ assistant coach/recruiting coordinator for Schaefer. She helped the Longhorns land the No. 4 ranked class in the country in 2021.

Before that, she spent four seasons over two stints at Mississippi State under Schaefer. She also served as the head coach of Arkansas-Fort Smith from 2016-2018.

“Coaching basketball to me is about the love,” she says. “The passion and the service that we get to display and help others and be blessed with these opportunities with the game. “So my journey starts with who I was raised by and who they molded me to be.

“They gave me a big heart, and I work really hard.”

Lovato’s parents, Frances and Ernesto, were a constant presence at her games, whether she was playing at West Texas A&M, coaching high school, junior college and Division II and Division I college.

‘My world’

“She’s my world,” Ernesto Lovato said from his hospital room Thursday. “We used to go everywhere ever since she was recruited out of high school to the college in West Texas in Canyon.”

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Winning and Elena’s parents were constants at Trinity Valley, where she won consecutive NJCAA Division I national titles in 2013 and 2014. She was the NJCAA Division I Coach of the Year after leading the 2013-14 Trinity Valley team to a 36-1 record.

“My teams loved her,” Elena Lovato says of her mother. “She would cook enchiladas and sopapillas for them.”

After her two national titles in her second stint at Trinity Valley, Elena joined Schaefer’s staff at Mississippi State before the start of the 2014-2015 season. She served as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator.

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