As much as anything, it’s Loree Payne’s adaptability that helped convince Santa Clara athletic director Heather M. Owen she was the right choice to become the Broncos’ new women’s basketball head coach. “She’s won in different environments,” Owen said. “She’s thrived in different environments.”
Payne, 43, arrives in the West Coast Conference after eight increasingly successful seasons at Northern Arizona, a Division I program in the Big Sky Conference, where she rang up 136 victories and had winning records her final six years. The Lumberjacks posted a program-record 27 victories this season.
Her life’s resume defines the ability to adapt. Payne grew up in the northern Montana community of Havre (pop. 9,300), located in a region known as the Hi-Line. “I enjoyed my time growing up in a small town,” she said. “I didn’t appreciate the 60-below winters. There wasn’t really anything to do so it definitely got me involved in a lot of different sports.”
Payne excelled on the basketball court, scoring nearly 2,300 points as a high school star, earning her a ticket to the big city of Seattle, where she thrived in late coach June Daugherty’s up-tempo system at the University of Washington. She averaged 17 points over four games as a sophomore while helping the Huskies advance to the Elite 8 round of the 2001 NCAA Tournament, twice was named first-team All-Pac-10 and scored 1,675 career points.
Her coaching career began with assignments as an assistant at Division II Northwest Nazarene, the West Coast Conference’s Portland and her alma mater UW before securing her first head-coaching gig.
Just 29 years old when she took over at Division III Puget Sound, Payne assembled a record of 130-58 in seven seasons through 2016-17. That led her to NAU in beautiful but remote Flagstaff, Arizona, situated amid the country’s largest pine forest at an elevation of 7,000 feet.
“I definitely enjoyed every ounce of my time there,” Payne said. “Being from a small town in Montana, to be back in a small town was nostalgic. But I spent all of my playing career and a majority of my professional career in a city so I’m really, really excited to get back to city life.”
Owen, who took over as Santa Clara’s AD last fall after stints as a student-athlete and administrator at Stanford, was just as excited to make Payne her first major hire.
“As you start to cast a net for potential candidates, she rose to the top real quick.” Owen said. “You saw what she was able to do at multiple stops along the way. She’s a winner and she knows how to get it done.”
At Puget Sound, former associate athletic director Robin Hamilton said Payne received overwhelming recommendations.
“You have to hire Loree Payne. She’s a winner in everything she does,” said Hamilton, recalling one reference. “Her name kept coming up. Everybody looks for an opportunity to lift Loree up because she lifts everybody else up. There’s never a time she disappoints professionally or personally.”
Retired Portland coach Jim Sollars, who hired Payne to work on his staff, said she was personable, related well to players and always was open to learning. “She’ll do a great job,” he said.
Santa Clara women’s basketball has experienced success, but not at the highest levels for quite some time. The most recent of the program’s six NCAA Tournament appearances came in 2005, a storyline the Broncos hope to change.
“She’s ready to win a conference championship,” Owen suggested. "I think we will have the pieces and Loree’s style of play will play very nicely in postseason tournaments. Really trying to re-establish Santa Clara women’s basketball as a great program in the Bay Area.”
Payne, who brought her entire NAU coaching staff to Santa Clara, takes over a team that was 14-17 last season and lost its top three scorers. But she is encouraged by the potential she sees. “We have a great product to sell from an institutional standpoint and academic standpoint,” she said. “But a big piece is getting the basketball a little bit more consistent in our ability to excel on the court.”
Payne has little recollection of a Nov. 24, 2001 game during her undergrad days when the Broncos beat the Huskies 71-56. “They were pretty good then,” she acknowledged.
She’s had more success coaching against the West Coast Conference, including a 6-0 record at Northern Arizona the past two years. “That was a good data point for us, for sure,” Owen noted.
Payne, whose NAU squad also beat Arizona twice last season, will utilize the same style she learned as a player at Washington and has implemented at her two previous head-coaching stops.
“You’ll see us shooting a lot of 3s and we play pretty fast,” she said. “We do a lot of analytics of most efficient shots and making sure all of our players are comfortable shooting the 3.”
Payne credits Daugherty for making her comfortable with an offensive system that fit her skill set.
“Playing for a coach that had a very similar style as to what I was as a player — I shot a lot of 3s, liked to play up-tempo, was definitely offensive-minded as a player — it showed me I could be a coach that does very similar things,” Payne said. “She was a huge piece to that.”
Hamilton, recalling their time together at Puget Sound, said Payne found a regular outlet for her competitiveness as a player in the athletic department’s lunchtime version of the NBA — the Noon Basketball Association. “It was Loree Payne and all the male coaches on campus. She just lit ‘em up,” Hamilton recalled. “There was a lot of negotiating over which team Loree played for after they saw her play.”
Hamilton expects Payne to light it up as the Broncos’ coach. “She’s going to do very well at Santa Clara and Santa Clara’s going to get someone who is an amazing developer of young women beyond the basketball court,” Hamilton said. “She graduates strong, confident, successful women. I love her approach. She is who she is and that culture is built into who she is and resonates to those around her.”
Payne began her new job at the end of March and “hit the road running,” Owen said.
“The feedback I got within her first two days here was overwhelmingly positive,” Owen said. “She’s collaborative, she’s fun, she’s smart, she’s articulate. She is not full of herself, thinking she is bigger than Santa Clara. She wants to fit in and be part of the community. All of that is just awesome.”