Stanford has officially named Kate Paye as its women’s basketball coach. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman)
It's official.
In a widely anticipated move, Stanford named longtime assistant Kate Paye as its new women's basketball coach Tuesday. She'll take over for her former boss and coaching legend Tara VanDerveer, who announced her retirement last week to conclude a 38-season career.
Paye, 50, played four seasons at Stanford from 1991-95 and has spent the last 17 seasons as an assistant on VanDerveer's staff. She'd been the associate head coach since 2016 and is VanDerveer's hand-picked successor.
“Stanford women’s basketball is a sisterhood, and I’m grateful that Kate was hired to maintain that culture and lead the program forward,” VanDerveer said, via a Stanford statement. “She has long been ready for this opportunity and is the perfect leader for Stanford at this time of immense change in college athletics. Kate was the choice for this job and I am confident she will achieve great success as head coach.”
Paye has been a part of two national championship teams at Stanford. She won her first as a freshman guard in 1992 in her first of four years as a role player for the Cardinal and was named captain twice. She was associate head coach for the 2021 team that secured VanDerveer's third and final NCAA title.
Paye played three seasons in the WNBA from 2000-02 before joining the Cardinal sideline in 2007. She had previous assistant coaching stints at San Diego State and Pepperdine.
Paye will lead the Cardinal into a new era as Stanford transitions from the Pac-12 to the ACC. The Bay Area program will join the East Coast-based conference alongside Cal and SMU next season in one of the starkest reverberations of conference realignment.
Paye takes over a program that's earned a top-two seed in each of the past five NCAA tournaments and has been no lower than a No. 4 seed in the last 19.