NDP student tackles expansive role as manager for Loyola Blakefield football team

TOWSON  – When Campbell Diffendall developed a passion for football as an eighth-grader at The School of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Homeland, she wanted to be a “little different.”

Since then, that difference has reached way beyond rooting for the Pittsburgh Steelers in a Baltimore Ravens town.

Diffendall, an 18-year-old senior at the all-girls Notre Dame Preparatory School in Towson, is serving as a manager for the varsity football team at Loyola Blakefield. She is believed to be the first female football manager at the all-boys school in Towson.

Five days a week during the fall for the past three years, Diffendall has completed her classwork at NDP and then made the short trip to the other side of Towson to spend two to three hours with Loyola’s football team.

Diffendall fulfills a variety of chores to support the Dons along with two other managers, Loyola senior Patrick Loester and sophomore Caelon Turner. Her duties at daily practice run the gamut from the mundane, such as setting up equipment, to the technical skills of operating a drone to better view formations and analyzing game-footage video.

She attends team meetings with players and coaches to discuss strategy. During games, she’s prowling the sideline charting plays and often offers insight to the coaches. She also manages the team’s social media accounts, posting information authorized by the coaching staff to keep fans and classmates informed about the Dons.

“She’s such a high-energy person,” said Loyola football coach Blake Henry, who is also the school’s athletic director. “Sometimes I struggle to find things for her to do because she is so eager to help in any way that she can.”

Henry, who has coached high school football for 18 years in Maryland, Virginia and Georgia, said Diffendall has earned the respect of the team.

“The boys look at her as a team member,” said Henry, who is in his first year as head coach with the Dons and third as athletic director. “She’s a great person and vital to our success.”

Diffendall is happy to be part of the team, but she has loftier goals in mind. She has dreams of one day becoming the first female general manager of a National Football League team.

Those dreams all started back when she was an eighth-grade student at Cathedral School preparing for confirmation.One of her confirmation instructors was Loyola football coach Anthony Zehyoue, now an assistant coach at the United States Naval Academy Prep School in Rhode Island. Zehyoue encouraged Diffendall to develop her passion. He even connected her by Zoom with Pittsburgh Steelers general manager Omar Khan for a discussion about roles in football.

Since then she has continued to expand her football connections.

In addition to managing for Loyola, she has picked the brain of football analyst Jason La Canfora, a former network NFL insider and Loyola graduate whose wife, Lauren, taught at NDP. She also shadowed Ravens vice president Kate Kasabula, an NDP graduate, and Towson University athletics administrative assistant Marissa Rutzebeck through Notre Dame Prep’s Women In (WIN) … Career Exploration Program.

Diffendall, a parishioner of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, said her football drive started during the COVID pandemic.

“I was looking to take my mind off a scary world,” she said. “Football gave me a sense of community.”

She gravitated to following her father Michael’s favorite team, the Steelers, to be different from her twin sister, Abbey, and younger brother, Cooper, who were in camp with mom Johanna Lett’s favored Ravens. Both her parents are optometrists and operate Jacksonville Eye Care in Phoenix, Md.

She decided to become a part of the team at Loyola as a sophomore after giving tennis and lacrosse competition a try at NDP.

“Being a part of the football team really gave me a new perspective for what I wanted to do,” said Diffendall, who also competed in soccer, lacrosse and basketball at Cathedral School.

At NPD, she founded the Women in Sports Club last year, which has grown from 100 students to 180 in less than a year under her leadership.

“Her conviction and ability to start a club like that speaks a lot about her,” said NDP assistant athletic director Cynthia Walsh. “It’s pretty incredible, because it’s not easy to put yourself out there like that in front of your peers. Her communication and organizational skills are outstanding.”

“She views sports in a different way,” said Walsh, who moderates the Women in Sports Club. “It’s not just about being on the field and in between the chalk lines. She recognizes there are a variety of roles that are important to each sport.”

Diffendalll is preparing to take her game to the next level and, true to form, has an expansive game plan.

She is working on applications for the Naval Academy, the University of Maryland, Virginia Tech, Bucknell University and James Madison University. Depending on which college she attends, she wants to have a double major in sports management and then either finance, statistics or economics.

She figures the dual study interests will prepare her well for professional sports management roles.

“Being at an all-girls school, I’ve had leadership opportunities that I probably wouldn’t get somewhere else,” she said.

She also doesn’t lose sight of the fact that she’s doing something she enjoys and she likes being a “team within a team,” working with the other Loyola football managers.

“When I first started as a sophomore, I was really nervous, but the guys on the team really went out of their way to embrace my role and include me. Now, they are like my second family. It’s been incredible.”

Turkey Bowl

Nov. 28 at Johnny Unitas Stadium, Towson University, 7537 Auburn Drive, Towson; Calvert Hall and Loyola Blakefield square off in high school football for the 104th time; 10 a.m.; Tickets: loyolablakefield.org or calverthall.com

Email Gerry Jackson at gjackson@CatholicReview.org

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