Patriots Make History With Hire to Bill Belichick Staff

The New England Patriots turned to the Ivy League to make a historic hire.

The New England Patriots have made a historic hire over the weekend, as Maya Ana Callender has been brought in as a scouting assistant. 

She becomes the second woman to work in the Patriots' scouting affairs, joining longtime director of administration Nancy Meier, who has been with the team since 1975.

Callender is nonetheless a landmark arrival in the history of the Patriots, as she's the first female hire of the Bill Belichick era that began in 2000. She owns previous NFL experience as a holder of a fellowship with both the Philadelphia Eagles and Tampa Bay Buccaneers but is likely best known for her time as the director of football operations at Princeton University. 

A native of The Bronx, Callender served as a liaison between the Tigers and NFL pursuers. The Tigers went 8-2 last season, which included a 5-2 tally in Ivy League play and is part of a 17-3 run over the past two campaigns (sharing the Ivy title with Dartmouth).

"She was able to carve out time almost every day to practice the craft of evaluating," current Tigers head coach Bob Surace said of Callender, per Mike Reiss of ESPN. "She would look at NFL games, evaluate players and learn scout-speak, the language of talking about somebody’s reach, length, production, how they use their hands. ... She would have a pad out at our practices, taking notes.”

"We have a small staff, so they’re given lots of duties. For some of them like Maya, they rise to the top. To her credit, she started from the ground up and really put herself in a great position to take this next step.”

Callender's hire is part of an influx of female arrivals throughout the league: 33 women were full-time hires of NFL scouting departments last season and newcomers like Callender will only add to that ledger.

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Geoff Magliocchetti is on Twitter @GeoffJMags

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