Loree Payne is neither used to losing, nor does she particularly like it.
Payne had a ton of success playing basketball at the University of Washington from 1999 to 2003. Now, though, just coming off her first year as an assistant coach for the University of Portland, she has seen the other side.
The Pilots were 6-22 last season in coach Jim Sollars’ 19th year at the school, his 29th overall as a collegiate head coach. They lost their last nine games, including a 77-42 defeat to then-No. 24 Gonzaga in the first round of the West Coast Conference tournament.
Those who know Payne best wouldn’t be surprised that she’s shaken that off and looks for vastly better things next season. She considers 2003-04 an aberration in a program that participated in the postseason five times in the previous 10 years.
“I think there’s always a feeling of urgency,” Payne said. “I don’t think you can be complacent in any job that you do. It’s a lot of fun. It brings out the competitiveness. It definitely keeps you focused. And it keeps you doing what you love to do.”
As a player, reporters soon learned that Payne would rather re-live the near-death experiences of UW coach June Daugherty’s conditioning drills than publicly display pessimism. She hasn’t changed as a coach. Not a bit.
“We knew in the back of our minds that we had some top recruits coming in next year, so I think that that helped us get through some of the tough times,” said Payne, who was an assistant at Northwest Nazerene University in Nampa, Idaho, for a year before she came to Portland. “Then when the season got over, we focused on getting stuff ready to go for next year.”
That’s a sign, Sollars said, of the type of coach Payne is developing into.
“She’s great; she typifies what we’re looking for,” said Sollars, who earned his Ph.D. in history at Washington. “She has enormous passion and enthusiasm for basketball. That’s a start. It was not a job that was thrust on her. She wants to be a basketball coach.”
Payne shares assistant-coaching duties with Kelley Berglund, a Seattle Pacific grad who played against Payne before she transferred from Washington State. Sollars heaps credit on both for their recruiting acumen, which, ultimately, will be the deciding factor in turning around the program. Certainly, Payne’s name and her association with a high-profile program don’t hurt. What budding high school star on the West Coast hasn’t heard of her?
In her four years at Washington, Payne went to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament, helped the Huskies to a Pacific-10 Conference title and was a first-team all-Pac-10 pick in her junior and senior years. She is Washington’s all-time leader in 3-pointers made (245) and attempted (732). She’s the No. 7 all-time scorer at UW with 1,675 career points. She hit 81.7 percent of her free throws, No. 2 on the school career list.
But it’s more than that. It’s personality. It’s connection. It’s getting into the living rooms and wowing parents as well as recruits. In that respect, Payne already is a formidable recruiter.
“She’s very outgoing and very personable,” Sollars said. “I don’t think she’s ever met a stranger. And she enjoys – and this is coming from a 60-year-old man that doesn’t, necessarily – she enjoys talking to 18-year-old kids. She can talk movies. She can e-mail. She can text-message. She can do all those things because she enjoys doing them. For me, it’s like pulling teeth at this age, but for her, it’s second nature.
“That’s so much more important than it used to be, now that juniors are committing so early. You can’t really get to know them personally, face-to-face, because we’re restricted from doing so. You have to make contacts through the communications system.”
Payne admits to missing playing. She and Berglund play in a city league and scrimmage with the Pilots, which helps. Payne says her jump shot, that gorgeous, textbook jumper familiar to everyone who follows UW women’s hoops, as “rusty, but it still works.”
But she’s had little trouble moving on. She’s a young assistant learning from a head coach respected greatly in the profession. And despite 6-22, Payne said she believes Portland is where she belongs.
“It’s awesome; I love it here,” she said. “It’s a great city. It’s a great school. I’m under one of the best coaches in America. It’s awesome.”
The bet here is that Payne will help it become even more awesome.
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