The New England Patriots hired Maya Ana Callender as a scouting assistant.
ESPN’s Mike Reiss credited Callender, as becoming the franchise’s first full-time female scout. The NFL employed 33 women as full-time scouts last season.
However, Callender isn’t the first woman in New England’s scouting department. Nancy Meier, the director of scouting administration, is the organization’s longest-tenured employee. She’s held the role since 1975.
Patriots hire Princeton director of football operations Maya Ana Callender to be the team’s first-ever full-time female scout. https://t.co/twqZt7NBsM
— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) May 21, 2023
Callender worked a training-camp fellowship with the Philadelphia Eagles two years ago. She took a heavier interest in scouting after the experience.
“She became our pro/NFL liaison, so every time a scout came in — which was probably 50 times last year, every team came in at least once — she set them up,” Princeton head coach Bob Surace told Reiss. “She talked about the players, their injury histories, how she had evaluated their performances. Then, by the time the scouts got to me, they didn’t have a lot of questions. I was kind of irrelevant on that, which was a new thing for me. She was terrific.”
Callender, who graduated from Utica College in 2016, served another fellowship with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers last year. She was an interim director of football operations at Belhaven University before spending four years at Princeton.
“We’re not the NFL. We have a small staff, so they’re given lots of duties. For some of them like Maya, they rise to the top,” Surace said. “To her credit, she started from the ground up and really put herself in great position to take this next step.”