Their backgrounds are similar enough as to almost be uncanny; respected assistants for their respective Canyon ISD programs, successful lengthy stints as head coaches at smaller schools, a track record of winning at both, be it as the head coach or top assistant.
However, the paths that Canyon’s Matt Lovorn and West Plains’ Jeff Lofton have taken to their first full seasons of leading their teams aren’t that similar. Lovorn already had a half-season as Canyon’s head coach before he got the job for good in late 2025 while Lofton was a lieutenant in helping build the fledgling West Plains program before taking over after four years as the top assistant to Adam Cummings.
For eight months, Lovorn knew he would be the head coach at Canyon in 2026. Lofton didn’t find out he’d be leading West Plains until May, only two weeks before the end of the 2025-26 school year.
Both Lovorn and Lofton are now tasked with maintaining program traditions or even building on them. The good news for them and their not so new schools is that they were in ideal positions to take over, whether they were expecting to or not.
For the first time this season, they’ll be ones to say the buck stops here, and prove it to players, students and administrators.
Lovorn: The Eagle lands back home
Matt Lovorn has become the latest area head coach to prove Thomas Wolfe wrong: You can go home again.
Lovorn graduated from Canyon in 2005 and his coaching journey took him away for well over a decade. He actually had a seat at the table in 2009, but the place didn’t stay open long.
“My last two years in college I was at West Texas A&M and I was hired as a contract coach at Canyon Junior High,” Lovorn said. “I was technically on staff for coach (Blake) Bryant at that time. When I did graduate from college I was hoping and praying he had a position for me and he didn’t. Those two years contract coaching got my foot in the door to kind of figure out if coaching is what I wanted to do and sure enough it was the career choice I ended up taking. Instead of coming here I got hired in Stratford.”
That worked out pretty well. Lovorn spent six seasons in Stratford as an assistant to Eddie Metcalf in one of the Panhandle’s most storied and successful programs. After four years as an offensive coordinator, Lovorn ascended to the head coaching position when Metcalf retired from coaching following the 2014 season.
Lovorn proved he could handle the head coaching position for the next eight seasons, leading the Elks to a Class 2A Division II state championship in 2021. One season later, Lovorn finally did get that chance to join Canyon’s staff, as Todd Winfrey took him on as offensive coordinator for the 2023 season.
Midway through last season, Lovorn had an unexpected opportunity to take over as head coach when Winfrey was unexpectedly removed from the post. It was an instant dream come true, but a complicated one as well.
“My first thought when our athletic director John Peterson and principal (Jennifer) Boren called me about the situation was that not only me, but our staff as a whole said what do our players need the most?,” Lovorn said. “They talked to me about that and we also visited as a coaching staff asking how can we put these kids first the rest of the season. We had to put all these pieces in place. I was given the title but our staff came together better than I’ve seen in years.”
It was at least as jarring for the players who had been used to Winfrey calling the shots. What helped was that Lovorn had been running the offense for two and a half years, making the transition far less painful.
The Eagles were 4-1 when Lovorn took over but had to weather the storm.
“It was for sure pretty crazy but there wasn’t too much change,” said senior quarterback Brox Hacker, who had grabbed hold of the starting job prior to the start of District 2-4A Division I play and ran for 817 yards and eight touchdowns last season. “We kind of kept rolling with what we knew worked. I think just sticking together and fighting through that is what worked best for that.”
Results weren’t always pretty in district, but Canyon clawed through and not only made the playoffs, but reached the third round before losing to new Canyon ISD rival West Plains. The Eagles finished 8-5.
That didn’t necessarily answer questions over who would be leading the Canyon program for 2026. Lovorn seemed as qualified as anybody to take over, but didn’t view his eight games as interim head coach as an audition.
“It really never crossed my mind,” Lovorn said. “We took everything for quite awhile day by day and week by week trying to give whatever we had to our kids to give them the best experience possible. Everybody’s world was kind of rocked for a moment. At the time I didn’t think about what was coming after the season.”
As per standard, CISD opened applications for the job statewide the moment the season ended. Like all other applicants, Lovorn had to submit to a formal interview if he was serious about taking over permanently at Canyon.
“They eventually opened up the job which happened really, really quick after the season,” Lovorn said. “John Peterson did a great job of going through that entire process. I went through it like everybody else did.
“What I was most impressed with was how fast the district wanted to move. All that got done before Christmas break and when we came back everything was set into place. There was no waiting game and that was important for our program and the kids most importantly.”
In the end, CISD decided not to try to fix what wasn’t broken and Lovorn went into this season with more experience leading his team than any other “new” coach could have. The transition has been little transition at all.
“Coach Lovorn is a great coach,” said returning starting senior defensive back Will KIlgore. “He’s always pushing us to be a family together so we’re not worried about who’s coaching us, we’re just worried about sticking together as a family and that’s what coach Lovorn and the staff has pushed us to do. I was fully confident in every coach’s ability and more confident in the players’ ability to stick together as a team and do what we do best.”
The second half of last season gave Lovorn, his staff and players a chance to develop a comfort zone with each other. That made it easier to prepare for this season when two-a-days started.
Lovorn views the Canyon program as one which the engine needs to be tuned up more than overhauled.
“A lot of things have stayed the same as far as our scheme goes on offense, defense and special teams,” Lovorn said. “There’s a few things that we’ve tweaked. Our biggest focus has been on the details and fundamentals so we probably haven’t installed a ton of things and looked at details of what we want to be.”
Considering the surprises and issues the team experienced last year, a more stable environment this year should raise expectations. That’s why Hacker thinks bringing back Lovorn was the right call.
“I think all of us wanted (Lovorn) back and I think all of us were very happy when we got him back,” Hacker said. “He took over as a great leader for us and got us what we needed. He stuck with us through all the hard things and we were all pretty excited to have him back.”
Now that it’s official, Lovorn can fully put the stamp on his alma mater, even if it means taking some lessons from his Stratford days.
Following a pattern, Lovorn replaced his spot on the coaching staff with Jon Murphy, the same person who replaced him as head coach at Stratford. That gives the offense some thematic continuity.
It also shows that getting on as a coordinator with an established successful program is a good way to finally get the top job.
“Patience is huge whenever it comes to this career,” Lovorn said “There’s a lot of really, really good coordinators and assistant coaches out there that bide their time and a lot of time it’s for the position they’re best at. Whenever I took over at Stratford it was taking the things we did well and adding to them just based on my staff’s experience. We’re able to do the same thing here so we try to honor that big time.”
The football locker room isn’t the only place where Lovorn will see some familiar faces on campus. In fact, if he drops by basketball practice, he’ll see his mirror image.
Lovorn’s twin brother Kyle, a Canyon grad, will start his second full year as boys head basketball coach this year. Both have been on campus the previous two years (leading to some confusion as to their respective identities), but this will be the first full school year where both are running the shows for their programs.
Both Lovorn brothers have had highly successful coaching careers before returning to Canyon and Matt acknowledges their parallels which have mirrored each other as much as their identities.
“We both started coaching the exact same year out of college and he’s had a couple of more stops than I’ve had over the course of his career,” Matt said of Kyle. “We’ve always had conversations over the years about maybe one of these days before we retire we might be at the same school coaching together. We never would have dreamed it would be this soon and definitely not at our alma mater. It’s been pretty special so far.”
Lofton tasked with maintaining West Plains young legacy
Ironically, Lofton was more established at West Plains than Lovorn was at Canyon, at least as far as being a member of the coaching staff.
Like Lovorn, Lofton gave up a head coaching position at Idalou in 2022 to become the assistant head coach to Cummings in the school’s first year. Also like Lovorn, Lofton had been a highly successful head coach for nine seasons in Idalou.
Lofton was the right-hand man for Cummings during a dizzying four-year run of success for the Wolves, highlighted by a trip to the Class 4A Division I state semifinals. The Cummings era came to an end in April, though, when Cummings left the sideline for the front office as a CISD associate superintendent.
Less than a month later, Lofton was named the second head football coach in West Plains history. The place is under new management, but don’t expect it to look any different.
“Obviously the role’s bigger,” Lofton said. “The system that we roll with, the camaraderie that we roll with and the way we come in and work as a staff, none of that’s changed. There’s tweaks but there’s no wholesale changes. We have the same team meeting and workout schedule that we’ve always had because it’s been super successful. There’s been no need to change.”
What might different for Lofton, his staff and players is the sense of urgency. The Wolves will have a lot of new players this fall and Lofton had been on the job less than three months when he led the first two-a-days.
It helps that there are a lot of familiar faces in the locker room.
“For sure it’s a transition, but it’s different than if I was an outsider coming in,”
Lofton said. “If I took this job from a previous school and I didn’t know any coaches and I didn’t know any players that’s different. We built this thing from the ground up. Coach Cummings gave us a blueprint when we built this thing, so why would we change something we put our stamp on?”
There have been just about zero radical adjustments through the first two weeks of two-a-days and scrimmages.
“Nothing’s changed really,” said senior running back Slade Russell, who ran for 2,002 yards and 24 touchdowns last season. “I felt like we picked up where we left off from last year. Everything (Lofton) does has good intentions on it.
“When (Cummings) left everyone inside the fieldhouse was talking about we hoped somebody from the inside would take over. If somebody from the outside came in we knew they would change things up.”
Some change, though, is inevitable. Graduation hits every year for every program, but for the first time in the school’s brief history, no one will be around on the field who was there from the beginning.
Names like Reid Macon, Kane White-Tinsley, Kaden Hooker, Keegan Collins and so many others graduated after helping to establish an enviable tradition in such a short time on campus.
Last Friday, the Wolves faced Class 5A Palo Duro in a scrimmage which drew a large crowd to the West Plains campus as much out of curiosity as anything else. Palo Duro is the opposite of West Plains in terms of returning experience, as the Dons have the bulk of their roster coming back from a 10-2 team last season.
Those numbers became readily apparent on the field, but for Lofton, the four weeks before the regular season starts carries bigger lessons.
“Palo Duro’s one of the top ranked teams right now and they’ve got a ton back from the best run they’ve had in awhile,” Lofton said. “Coach Cummings set this schedule up early. We need to see great teams even if we’re going to be brand new. I’ve seen a lot of teams schedule pansies early and go 5-0 but it means nothing in district.”
Process might be more important than results at West Plains this season, at least until the start of district. Starting lineups on both sides of the ball appear to be far from set.
Lofton thinks it could be a selling job to get his team ot believe it could come close to the squads which came before it.
“The challenge is to raise them and that’s what we’ve talked about since May,” Lofton said. “We’re still not satisfied. These kids they believe that they have just as good a chance to as well as the group before. The belief they have that they won’t just uphold the standard but raise the bar, that’s what those kids who graduated would say.”
At least one player who knows what Lofton is all about is senior linebacker Cash Lofton, the coach’s son. Cash will finish his high school career with his dad as head coach, which he hopes makes for a special senior season – and a successful one.
“It was super exciting, especially for it being my senior season,” said Cash Lofton of playing for his father, who also was his position coach last year. “Just to have him being in charge, we’re rolling into it and watching film together and I get to hear about everything we’re putting into this program. We’re holding the same standard and bringing a whole lot more juice. We’re just trying to be more physical and keep playing the same West Plains football.”
Another factor helping Jeff Lofton is that head coaching isn’t uncharted territory for him. He left the head post at Idalou (his alma mater where he’d also served as an assistant) after nearly a decade to join the staff at a new school, constituting a major leap of faith.
What Lofton learned at Idalou was establishing and maintaining a culture, something which won’t change at West Plains.
“Every year as a coach if you’re satisfied you’re not very good, so every season you always second guess yourself,” Lofton said. “You have your guys in position to win and that’s all you ask. You understand and work hard with that in mind.”
Knowing that, it’s easy to understand why the team’s motto for this year is R.I.D.E. The acronym is for “Rent Is Due Everyday.”
To succeed, the Wolves will have to pay up under Lofton. They have a pretty good idea of how high the rent is.
“I feel like coach Lofton brings a different kind of culture with him as well,” Russell said. “That’s what’s good about it is that he’s going to bring about something that’s different and something that’s been around the last four years.”
Blending philosophies together might be the best recipe if the Wolves to approach anything near their success of the last four years. Lofton thinks that’s what helped him and his team get as far as it has and could make it continue.
“We built this as one and we’re continuing this as one, and just like coach Cummings we’re always looking to make it better,” Lofton said. “The offensive system is in place and the defensive system is in place.
“Everything we’ve done under (Cummings) we’ve picked. There’s not one thing he didn’t give us which we didn’t have a hand in. When you open a school you all have to pitch in.”
