Navas joined Eriksen’s coaching staff for the 2022 season as a volunteer assistant. In her first season with the Bulls, her experience was used in a variety of ways, including hitting, catching, defensive alignments and scouting.
Navas has spent the last nine seasons as the associate head coach at South Carolina. In her time with the program, she helped lead the team to seven NCAA tournament appearances, including a 2018 trip to the NCAA Super Regionals.
A defense-minded coach, Navas aided the Gamecocks’ improvement in many categories, including a program-record .979 fielding percentage in 2018. While on the staff, South Carolina improved their fielding percentage from the previous year five times and turned 22 or more double plays in all but two seasons. Behind the plate, Gamecock catchers threw out 10 or more runners attempting to steal a base five times with her help.
Prior to South Carolina, Navas served as head coach for the National Fastpitch League’s Carolina Diamonds in its inaugural season in 2012, coaching three of the league’s top four home run hitters and Katie Burkhart, who finished third in the league in strikeouts.
Navas was also the inaugural head coach at North Carolina State, starting the program in the 2004 season and finishing with a 296-226 record between 2004 and 2012. She led the team to the 2006 Atlantic Coast Conference regular season and tournament titles and two NCAA tournament appearances (2006, 2007).
While at the helm at N.C. State, eight of Navas’ student-athletes garnered first-team All-ACC honors with 10 taking National Fastpitch Coaches Association All-Southeast Region accolades. For three-consecutive years, a member of the Wolfpack earned one of the league’s individual awards, including Navas’s ACC Coach of the Year in 2006, and she coached her second league Rookie of the Year in 2012, Renada Davis. In 2007, Navas tutored Abbie Sims to both the ACC Player of the Year and third-team NFCA All-America accolades.
Navas had her first head coaching job at NCAA Division II-member Barry University. In her time with the team, she led the program to six regionals, two Sunshine State Conference championships and a second-place finish in the 1998 NCAA tournament. In a nine-year tenure with the team, she posted a 335-134-1 (.714) record.
Overall, in her 18 years as head coach, Navas has posted a 631-360-1 record, eight NCAA tournament appearances and four conference championships.
Ultimately, Navas started her coaching career at Missouri under NFCA Hall of Fame head coach Jay Miller as the team’s hitting coach. Coaching the team for the 1991 season, she aided the team as it made its second NCAA Women’s College World Series appearance.
In addition to her collegiate coaching career, Navas currently serves as an assistant coach for the U-18 USA Softball Women’s National Team. She assisted the team to first-place finishes at both the 2021 Junior Pan Am Games and the 2021 U-18 World Championships.
Navas played collegiate softball for NAIA Oklahoma City University as a shortstop and helped the team record a second-place finish in the 1986 NAIA tournament. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in physical education in 1987 and received her master’s degree in athletic administration from Barry University in 1999.
