SAN JOSE — At barely 5 feet tall, Beca Perez is not the most physically imposing figure on a football field. But the 27-year-old has already made a massive imprint on the program that finished last season with the most regular season wins of any Football Bowl Subdivision school in California.
Perez is San Jose State’s director of player personnel, overseeing the program’s recruiting efforts. The Sunnyvale native was one of just three women with that job at the FBS level in 2024.
“I have a hard time remembering everybody that I run into, but people don’t really forget about me,” said Perez, who can be easily spotted on the Spartans sideline by her chrome Quay sunglasses that shine like medieval armor.
San Jose State University football recruiting director Beca Perez takes part in practice on Wednesday, July 30, 2025, in San Jose, Calif. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)
The difference between Perez and her fellow groundbreakers – Callie Cameron at Baylor and Zaire Turner at Notre Dame – is the level of resources available.
“Some schools will have a group of, say, 15 people scouting and separating different positions, said SJSU head coach Ken Niumatalolo, who, like Perez, is in his second season with the Spartans. “She does it all on her own.”
Perez’s influence has been noticed beyond the SJSU campus. She was named one of 247Sports’ top 30 college football coaches and staffers under 30 last season.
Perez first met Niumatalolo in 2023, when he was the tight ends coach at UCLA and she was Stanford’s assistant director of recruiting. The pair chatted about their service academy backgrounds – Perez had been Army’s recruiting director in 2022, and Niumatalolo had spent the previous 14 seasons as Navy’s head coach.
The pair also had a connection to Preston Pehrson, Perez’s boss at Stanford. He was Navy’s director of player personnel in 2017 under Niumatalolo and had known the coach since he was a teen.
When Niumatalolo was hired at San Jose State, one of the first people he reached out to was Pehrson – to ask about Perez.
Pehrson’s response: “I don’t know why you wouldn’t hire her.”
The next day, Perez got a puzzling text from Pehrson wishing her luck with “Coach Ken.”
She had sent Niumatalolo a congratulations text but did not think much of it. Then she got a call at 8 a.m. from Niumatalolo.
“There are certain moments I really don’t forget, that I can replay in my head all the time, and that was definitely one of them,” Perez said.
By 9:30, Perez was at the SJSU football offices for a staff meeting.
The South Bay has long been home for Perez.
Playing football with her cousins in the streets of Sunnyvale until the lights came on is where her love for sport began.
As a freshman at St. Francis High, she and her friends decided to acclimate themselves at their new school by trying out to manage the football team.
“It was one of those things like, ‘Let’s take a whack at it,’” she recalled. “Never did I think it would get to the point that I’m in this position now.”
Perez was familiar with the St. Francis football culture, going to Friday night games with her grandma, who worked at the school as a cook. During summers, she would help her wash dishes and attend the sports camps. As a high schooler, she became a part of that team she watched growing up.
“It wasn’t really until I graduated from high school when I actually fell in love with the game of football and knew the opportunities that I could have,” Perez said. “The boundaries that I could break seemed a little bit more challenging, and I wanted to attack that challenge.
“There’s times where it does hit me where there’s not many females, let alone Hispanic females, that are doing this every day. I hope to continue to break more barriers and make sure that I leave a path for others that want to follow.”
Perez has moved up the college football ladder quickly.
In 2016, she was the equipment manager at the College of San Mateo. When CSM’s special teams coordinator Fred Guidici was hired at SJSU a year later, Perez followed to serve as a student assistant coach. Her connections with Guidici and fellow SJSU assistants Derrick Odum and Kevin McGiven connected her with Army special teams coordinator Sean Saturnio, who helped Perez land her first full-time job as the Black Knights’ director of recruiting.
San Jose State University football recruiting director Beca Perez on Wednesday, July 30, 2025, in San Jose, Calif. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)
Then came her dream job at SJSU. But Perez was presented with a challenge: building a Division I program essentially from scratch.
When former head coach Brent Brennan took the job at Arizona, 28 players tested the transfer portal. Spartans star wide receiver Nick Nash entered his name in the portal the day Perez started.
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“He told me, ‘The house is burning down right now,” Perez said, laughing about her first phone call with Niumatalolo.
But Perez helped put out the fire. And then helped spark a new era for the program.
Working from her “15-by-15-foot office,” and using her personal phone, Perez utilized all her connections and resources. Perez says X, formerly known as Twitter, is her No. 1 tool and allows her to discover athletes all over the nation.
“She’s the one person I don’t mind on her phone at practice because she’s constantly on it, social media, doing things that keep us 19 steps ahead,” Niumatalolo said.
Perez more than helped the Spartans keep up during what could have been a difficult transition season.
Nash decided to return for a final season, but SJSU still opened the season with just 52 returning players, the third-fewest in college football. But the Spartans, who were picked to finish 10th in the Mountain West, placed fifth and earned a berth in the Hawaii Bowl. It was SJSU’s third straight bowl appearance, establishing the most successful run in school history.
When Ken Niumatalolo, right, was hired as the head football coach at San Jose State, one of his first moves was to bring in Beca Perez as the Spartans’ director of player personnel. PHOTO COURTESY OF SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY
“Last year was chaos,” Perez said. “I felt like I was swimming, working kind of nonstop. It was probably closer to 15-hour days.”
After she survived that whirlpool, this offseason has felt completely different.
She now races Niumatalolo to see who can arrive first to the office, the winner normally getting there at 4:45 a.m. The to-do list ranges from focusing on the ever-evolving transfer portal to high school recruiting or directing attention to the current roster.
“I’m excited because I’ve learned a lot, I feel I’ve grown as a person and in this position,” Perez said. “I feel comfortable now, I’m not swimming.”
But Perez isn’t satisfied. She says she has a chip on her shoulder to make the most of her opportunity and of SJSU’s resources.
“We’re doing a lot more with very little,” Perez said. “We have a really special group of kids and a really special team that I can at least say I had a hand in.”