A new age for Santa Clara women’s basketball has arrived with the Broncos naming Loree Payne, one of the top young coaches in the nation, as the program’s head coach. Santa Clara Director of Athletics Heather M. Owen made the announcement on Monday. Santa Clara will officially welcome Payne as the team’s head coach at a welcome event on Monday, March 31 at noon PT at the Leavey Center.
Loree Payne, one of the top young coaches in the nation, was announced as Santa Clara women's basketball's head coach on March 24, 2025. She joined the Broncos from Northern Arizona where she is the Lumberjacks’ all-time leader in wins with 136. She guided the team to 20 or more wins in each of the last three seasons, culminating in a program-record 27 victories and NAU’s first-ever postseason victory (NCAA, WBIT or WNIT) in 2024-25, and has won at least 10 conference games in each of the last six seasons.
A native of Havre, Mont., Payne has a 266-174 (.605) overall record as a head coach between her stints at NAU (eight seasons) and the University of Puget Sound (seven seasons). She was named the 2022-23 Big Sky Coach of the Year after guiding the Lumberjacks to the 2022-23 regular season title.
In her eight seasons in Flagstaff, Payne guided NAU to a 136-116 record (.540) and also set the program record for conference wins with an 88-62 (.586) mark. Her teams advanced to three-consecutive conference championship games from 2021-22 through 2023-24, and qualified for the Women’s National Invitation Tournament (WNIT) in ‘22-23 and ‘23-24 before earning the program’s first-ever bid to the Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament (WBIT) in ‘24-25.
NAU’s last three seasons under Payne’s leadership were particularly impressive. The Lumberjacks posted 20 or more wins and increased their win count each year with 21 wins in 2022-23, 25 in 2023-24 and 27 in 2024-25. NAU won 69.5 percent of their games over the stretch, including an outstanding 81.5 percent of their conference games (44-10).
In 2022-23, the Lumberjacks won a share of the Big Sky regular season championship for the first time since 1997-98 and qualified for the WNIT for the first time in program history. The following season saw NAU set a new program record with 25 wins en route to a second-straight WNIT appearance. That 2023-24 squad was a perfect 4-0 against WCC competition with wins over Portland, San Francisco, Pepperdine and Pacific.
Payne’s 2024-25 squad yet again broke the wins record with 27, set a program record for conference wins with a 16-2 mark and picked up a 71-69 victory over Arizona in the opening round of the WBIT for the program’s first-ever postseason victory. The Lumberjacks boasted 11 wins in nonconference play which included road victories at New Mexico, Pacific and Colorado State, and a 92-75 home win over Arizona.
Under Payne’s tutelage, 14 different Lumberjacks earned a total of 22 All-Big Sky honors, including six first team selections. Four players from the 2024-25 squad earned accolades with Taylor Feldman and Sophie Glancey being named unanimous First Team selections and Saniyah Neverson earning the conference’s Top Reserve of the Year Award.
Prior to NAU, Payne had an outstanding seven-year stint at Puget Sound where she was a two-time Northwest Conference (NWC) Coach of the Year and a finalist for the WBCA Division III National Coach of the Year in her final season (2016-17). Her teams consistently featured one of the nation’s top scoring offenses culminating with the Loggers finishing the 2016-17 season No. 6 nationally at 79 points per game. She finished her time with Puget Sound with a 130-58 (.691) overall record and 78-34 (.696) mark in conference play, and coached a total of 18 players to All-NWC honors with nine earning first team bids.
Similar to her final year with NAU, Payne’s final season with the Loggers was among the best in the school’s history. They racked up a school-record 26 wins against just three losses and captured their first-ever outright regular season NWC Championship with a perfect 16-0 mark in league play.
A two-time All-Pac 10 First Team selection, Payne had a decorated playing career for the Washington Huskies from 2000-03 where she averaged 14.4 points per game and helped lead the Huskies to two NCAA Tournaments, including an Elite 8 appearance in 2001. She finished her career as the program’s seventh-leading scorer with 1,675 career points and the all-time leader in 3-pointers (now third behind Kelsey Plum and Jazmine Davis) with 245.
Payne’s coaching career launched immediately after hanging up her sneakers, beginning with stints as an assistant at Northwest Nazarene (2003-04) and Portland (2005-07), before landing back with her alma mater for a three-year stint as the Huskies’ assistant coach and recruiting coordinator from 2008-10.
Payne is originally from Havre, Mont., where she was a 2009 inductee into the Montana High School Association Hall of Fame. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Washington in 2003 and her Master’s in Educational Leadership from NAU. She and her wife, Penny, are the proud parents of a Shih Tzu named Jaxson, who is social media famous with over 66,000 followers on TikTok.
| PAYNE'S MAJOR COACHING HONORS |
| Year |
Award |
| 2014-15 |
NWC Coach of the Year |
| 2016-17 |
NWC Coach of the Year | WBCA DIII Women's National Coach of the Year (finalist) |
| 2022-23 |
Big Sky Coach of the Year |
| YEAR-BY-YEAR |
| Year |
School |
Overall |
Conference |
Postseason/Notes |
| 2010-11 |
Puget Sound |
18-8 |
11-5 |
|
| 2011-12 |
Puget Sound |
13-13 |
9-7 |
|
| 2012-13 |
Puget Sound |
14-11 |
7-9 |
|
| 2013-14 |
Puget Sound |
16-10 |
9-7 |
|
| 2014-15 |
Puget Sound |
24-5 |
13-3 |
NCAA D111 Second Rd. | t-2nd most wins in program history |
| 2015-16 |
Puget Sound |
19-8 |
13-3 |
|
| 2016-17 |
Puget Sound |
26-3 |
16-0 |
NCAA D11 Second Rd. | Most wins in program history | NWC regular season champs |
| Record at Puget Sound (7 seasons): 130-58 (.691), 78-46 (.629) |
| 2017-18 |
Northern Arizona |
7-23 |
4-14 |
|
| 2018-19 |
Northern Arizona |
13-18 |
8-12 |
|
| 2019-20 |
Northern Arizona |
16-15 |
12-8 |
|
| 2020-21 |
Northern Arizona |
15-14 |
10-10 |
WBI Third Place |
| 2021-22 |
Northern Arizona |
12-14 |
10-8 |
|
| 2022-23 |
Northern Arizona |
21-14 |
13-5 |
WNIT First Round | Big Sky regular season co-champions |
| 2023-24 |
Northern Arizona |
25-10 |
15-3 |
WNIT, Second Round | 2nd most wins in program history |
| 2024-25 |
Northern Arizona |
27-8 |
16-2 |
WBIT, Second Round | Most wins in program history |
| Record at Northern Arizona (8 seasons): 136-116 (.605), 88-62 (.586) |
| Career (15 seasons): 266-174 (.605) |
WHAT THEY ARE SAYING ABOUT LOREE PAYNE
“Loree Payne is what every athletics director wants in a head coach - a true embodiment of authenticity and integrity matched with an exceptional basketball mind. Her leadership and ability to elevate teams to new heights, as she has done throughout her career, speaks volumes about her coaching prowess. In this new era of college basketball, Santa Clara has hired an outstanding human who will build relationships with her players, alumni and fans of Bronco women’s basketball while innovating to modernize the program.”
- Tonya Vogel, former George Washington University Athletics Director and current consultant with the Pictor Group.
“Coach Loree Payne is a proven program builder and will provide sustained excellence for the Santa Clara University basketball community. Her commitment to student-athlete success, on and off the court, will make the entire Bronco Family proud.”
-
Uri Farkas, Northern Arizona University Interim Athletic Director
“I’m super excited for Loree. I know how much she loved NAU, but I have no doubt that her accepting this offer is going to further her career and continue to impact the lives of the players that she is working with. Loree was an extremely caring coach. She valued us as so much more than players. She valued me as a person and was extremely supportive of everything I wanted to pursue on and off the court. I’m going to law school in a few months, and that’s something she encouraged me to do and she has just always extended her support, even in my post-grad life. Basketball-wise, she had such an impact on me as a player. Even though my freshman year wasn’t fantastic, she believed so much in who I was as a player and continued to push me to take extra steps and knew the potential I had. She did a fantastic job at bringing the best out of me and she is a huge person that I credit with all the success that I was able to achieve at NAU. I think the women at Santa Clara are getting someone who really cares about basketball, enjoys the game and never stops learning about the game. She is one of the best offensive minds that I know and that’s really her area of expertise. She loves to win, knows how to win and knows how to build a program with really solid pillars of foundation.”
- Emily Rodabaugh, NAU Women’s Basketball Guard/Forward (2020-24), ranks sixth on NAU’s all-time scoring list
