Los Fresnos announced Wednesday that former boys basketball first assistant coach Alex Lucio has been selected to be the next girls basketball coach for the Lady Falcons.
Lucio spent the past five years as a Falcons assistant and helped the team win four district titles and reach the Region IV-6A semifinals during the 2019-20 season. After paying his dues for years, Lucio is thankful to have a prime opportunity with Los Fresnos.
“Ever since I graduated high school I always knew I wanted to be a head coach. It runs in my family, my brothers are coaches and it’s just something I’ve always wanted,” Lucio said. “I’m so excited. It’s been a long journey to be a head coach and I finally got it, so it’s awesome. I’ve coached every division, started from the bottom (with 3- to 4-year-old basketball) all the way up to middle school and up to high school, so I kind of earned my stripes, as they say, to be a head coach.”
During his first year with Los Fresnos, Lucio was the JV dark coach. Falcons coach Marco Hinojosa quickly moved him up to be the varsity assistant. In the 2020-21 season, Lucio was the acting head coach for five games while Hinojosa was out due to COVID-19 protocols. Lucio coached the Falcons to wins in each contest.
Lucio is familiar with the girls program and said he has studied the team as the Lady Falcons often played district contests before the boys. He said he is “very blessed” to be working with returning talent like Sarahi Jones and Maritza Ortega while implementing some new things to keep the program competitive.
“They’re very athletic. They have so much potential, and that’s something I’m going to bring out in them,” Lucio said. “We are very young and they already have varsity experience so it’s not a rebuilding year, it’s just teaching them my philosophy and hit the ground running from there. … Just the schemes and all that stuff we did (with the boys), I’m going to translate that over to the girls side and it’s just playing up-tempo, playing fast and a different style of defense.”
Lucio said his various coaching gigs taught him the importance of patience, how to teach the game at different levels and how to get a team to jell and play as one.
He’ll be mixing lessons he learned from Hinojosa and his siblings — older brother Sam, who leads the Brownsville St. Joseph boys basketball team, and younger brother Fermin, who heads Brownsville Hanna’s boys basketball program — as he takes over the Lady Falcons.
The Lucio family had a celebratory barbecue when Alex was offered the position, and he said everyone was “so pumped up” after watching the work he put in to get here. The Hanna alumnus has “been really hungry to become a head coach,” and now that he has his chance, he’s ready to get to work.
“I’m just so happy to be here. Los Fresnos is a great district,” Lucio said. “There were opportunities to apply at other schools in other districts, but I didn’t even put my name in the hat. I was always hoping something would happen in Los Fresnos and it did, and I’m just so happy that I got it here in Los Fresnos and I’m here to stay.”
