From coaches to professional athletes to championship winners, the Paye family has it all. Kate Paye, the Stanford women’s basketball head coach, graduated from Menlo in 1991, while her brother John Paye graduated from Menlo in 1983. Throughout her career at Menlo, she led the varsity girls basketball team to three state championships.
After graduating from Menlo, Paye received offers to play basketball at Division I schools like Harvard and Princeton. Instead of jumping on those offers, Paye went on to try out for Stanford’s team, where she had been playing in basketball camps ever since she was little.
She was offered a spot and walked on as a point guard. “I wanted to find the right fit where I could grow both as a player and as a person,” Paye said.
After making the team, Paye played on Stanford’s 1992 national championship team before earning a scholarship. After her career at Stanford, Paye became an assistant head coach at San Diego State University during the 1995–96 season, before playing in the WNBA for the Minnesota Lynx and Seattle Storm for six years.
During her career in the WNBA, Paye attended Stanford Law and Business School. Upon being waived by the WNBA, Paye briefly worked as a corporate attorney for Palo Alto-based Cooley Godward LLP before rekindling her coaching career. Soon enough, she was back at Stanford again, this time as an assistant coach. For 17 years, Paye worked under the most winning coach in college basketball history, Tara Vanderveer.
During Paye’s time as an assistant, the Cardinal were consistently one of the top teams in the nation, going 543–102 (.842) and winning the 2021 national championship, while advancing to two other title games and nine total Final Fours. Stanford’s 527 wins in her time as an assistant were the second-most of any team in the nation over that span.
“Tara is amazing. I mean, her leadership, her vision [and] the way she handles herself and the team. It’s really inspiring,” Paye said. From coaching under one of the most well-known coaches in collegiate women’s basketball, Paye learned a lot about what it means to be a leader. “Leadership is about example, integrity, hard work, listening and motivating people to be their best,” Paye said.
As an assistant coach, Paye was named the Division I Assistant Coach of the Year in 2022 and again in 2024, becoming the only coach to win the award multiple times. With Vanderveer’s retirement in 2024, Paye was hired as the next women’s basketball head coach at Stanford.
After going 16–15 in her first year as head coach and missing the NCAA tournament, Paye looks forward to bouncing back after bringing in the third-best recruiting class in the nation, according to 247 Sports.
Since Paye’s Menlo days, basketball and women’s sports alike have gone through some major changes, one of the most prominent being the growth in popularity of women’s sports. “There’s more investment, more visibility, more opportunities and people finally recognizing the value,” Paye said.
Paye encourages the next generation of athletes to be bold. “Don’t be afraid to write your own story,” she said.
The Cardinal are 8–2 so far on the season.
