New UCF women’s coach Gabe Lazo, who grew up in little Havana, leans on life-changing lessons

When Gabe Lazo was growing up, if he wanted to get away from it all, he would find a pickup basketball game at one of the many parks in or around his home in Little Havana in Miami.

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Basketball was Lazo’s escape, a safe place where he could forget about all the troubles that surrounded him. Those cement courts were the one place where he didn’t have to worry about the drugs or the gangs or the crime that surrounded him.

“I was always outside riding my bike and playing basketball here or there. It was nonstop basketball, basketball, basketball,” Lazo recently told the Orlando Sentinel.

Lazo, 41, is set to begin his first season as UCF women’s basketball coach.

He was hired on April 6, replacing Sytia Messer, who was fired after four seasons with the Knights.

It’s another chapter in what has been an unbelievable journey for Lazo, a first-generation Cuban-American, who becomes the first Hispanic women’s head coach in the Power Four.

“I can’t put pressure on myself because I’m not afraid of failure,” Lazo said, reflecting on the honor.

Lazo was raised by his mother, Adela Aguiar, who fled Cuba as a young girl during the Fidel Castro regime, emigrating to Miami with her family in 1964. Lazo and Aguiar would develop a strong bond, one that would carry them through some unimaginable tough times.

“Without a doubt, my mother is my inspiration,” said Lazo, whose eyes wander to a picture of her on his office wall.

Aguiar suffered from mental health issues, which would put her in and out of institutions. Lazo would be there for her, making sure she was taken care of along the way.

But it was on the basketball courts where Lazo would learn some of life’s biggest lessons. He had an older brother, who was around occasionally, and he would follow him to the parks to play pickup games.

“I would play with the older guys,” Lazo recalled. “I was six and his friends were like 15. That’s where I picked up the nickname Pee Wee.

“That’s what got me into playing the game. It changed my life because the area I’m from is rough. I never got into the gang stuff, never got into the drug-dealing stuff. It was all basketball. Once I got older, those guys were like, ‘Yo, you’re really good.’”

Lazo lived across the street from Kinloch Park, west of downtown Miami. It would be one of the many locations where he would play pickup games.

“I was always out there playing, playing, playing, playing, playing and mom would come out of the house and yell my name, ‘Gabriel!’ and I would run home,” he said. “It’s almost like a little bit of a watchful eye over you.”

But it was a chance meeting that would change Lazo’s life.

“I met a coach named ‘Chicago’, who was the park manager at Jose Mari Park,” Lazo said. “He recruited me to go play for him. I would catch the public bus, go play for him and then he would take me home and feed me every night. The guy took care of me like his son.”

Lazo’s game grew and eventually he found himself on the courts at Miami Senior High School. A standout point guard, he led the Stingarees to three district titles, two city championships and a Final Four and Elite Eight showing in the state tournament.

Growing up, Lazo didn’t have to look far for basketball mentors, including legendary high school coach Marcos “Shakey” Rodriguez, who led Miami High to five state championships. Frank Martin and Anthony Grant, who would one day become Division I coaches in their own right, were also present, as was Sergio Rouco.

“It was a family, which I want to build here,” said Lazo.

“I never had a father, so my father figures were my coaches and my teachers,” he added. “I had teachers who really poured into me because they knew my background.”

Lazo would eventually meet his father when he was 19.

“I’m very similar to my dad. We’re both hard-working, good-hearted people who don’t hold grudges,” Lazo said. “He was relentless when it came to work. He didn’t shy away from it and he was good to people and people loved him.”

His father, like his mother, had fled Cuba. A prisoner of war in the Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961, he eventually moved to Miami and became a successful businessman. One of his ventures included owning a restaurant in Miami.

It was here that Lazo would get his first taste of leadership when his father tabbed him to be the manager.

“I said, ‘Why did you make me the manager? And he said, ‘Because I trust you,” Lazo recalled. “I was trying my hardest to be a good manager for him, but it was more about the opportunity to work for him. I learned so much.”

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Those moments with his father, who passed away when Lazo was 32, taught him the importance of his Cuban heritage.

“What I didn’t really understand when I was younger is the pride in our heritage and what my dad represented to a lot of Cuban people,” said Lazo. “I would just hear him say, ‘Oh, I hate Fidel Castro. (Cuba) was beautiful and it’s destroyed.’ I didn’t know any better.”

Lazo chose to attend nearby Florida International University, where he joined the basketball team as a walk-on. However, it wasn’t long before he caught the attention of coach Donnie Marsh, who trusted him enough to eventually give him a scholarship and move him into the starting lineup.

“I wanted it so bad and he gave me a chance,” said Lazo.

But Lazo’s career at FIU would only last one season.

“I was a knucklehead and I got in trouble, so I had to go to junior college,” Lazo explained. “I started at Miami Dade (Community College) and had a great career there. Then I went to Barry University.”

After his college career, Lazo pursued a professional career overseas. When that didn’t work out, he returned home and became a teacher. First, at Braddock High School and eventually at John A. Ferguson Senior High.

Along the way, he would become an assistant coach on the junior varsity women’s basketball team before being promoted to head coach at John A. Ferguson Senior High. Lazo spent five seasons with the Falcons, guiding the program to the 9A state championship game in 2017.

It was around this time that Lazo would face adversity once more.

Lazo and his mother found themselves living out of his car for several weeks as he struggled to pay her health care bills on a high school teacher’s salary.

“I was going into my last year as a high school coach,” said Lazo, who said nobody wanted to take his mother because of her condition. “(They would say) Gabe, your mom can’t come, but if you want a place to live, you can come live with us. I was like, ‘No,’ so we slept in the car.”

Eventually, Lazo would get back on his feet with the help of a friend. Still, there would be plenty of struggles along the way.

Lazo would return to FIU in 2017, this time as an assistant coach. Then, he found himself at Stony Brook (2019-21), George Washington (2021-22), Mississippi State (2022-23) and Tennessee (2024-26).

During his first season at Mississippi State, his mother suffered a fall and was hospitalized three months later. It turns out that Aguiar had suffered a subdural hematoma in her brain from the fall, which nearly cost her her life.

“I gotta build her all the way back up, and it took a while, but now she’s kicking ass,” Lazo said.

Following his time at Tennessee, he briefly joined Kim Mulkey’s staff at LSU, hired on March 31, but that’s before receiving a call from UCF athletics director Terry Mohajir. He was hired several days later.

It was nothing short of a whirlwind experience.

“I’ll never forget my first day,” he said. “I come here and meet a ton of people and I’m finally by myself (in my office) and I have a bunch of kids I want to come on visits, but I don’t know the process here to get an official visit. I return to my hotel that night and start crying because I’m like, what did I do?

“The next day, (assistant coaches) Lynn (Bria) and Bett (Shelby) get here and everything changes. That’s when I knew I was in the right place. From then on, it was like boom, boom, boom. Mikayla (Johnson) became the first player to commit. I’ll never forget her.”

The one thing he’s learned throughout his coaching career is how to fight through adversity.

“Adversity is going to happen all the time, in every aspect of life,” said Lazo. “Going through the process, it really taught me that you’ve got to fight through adversity. I’m 1% better every day.

“For our team, man, I just want to prepare these young women and let them know that there’s life beyond basketball.”

Two months after his introductory press conference, Lazo is in the middle of the Knights’ practice court, directing his team through summer camp.

“Everything in life is a lesson,” said Lazo. “I’ve made many mistakes in my life, but the will to learn, that’s why I think I’m here. I’m a willing learner. I love to learn, to ask questions. I have mentors that I drive crazy asking questions all the time.”

Please find me on X, Bluesky or Instagram @osmattmurschel. Email: [email protected]. Sign up for the Sentinel’s Knights Weekly newsletter for a roundup of all our UCF coverage.

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