Tom Brady calls her “the most dominant athlete in the Brady family … by far.” The Oklahoma City Spark are about to find out just how true that is.
Maya Brady, the niece of the seven-time Super Bowl champion quarterback, was chosen No. 1 in the Athletes Unlimited Softball League expansion draft on Monday. The shortstop joins the Oklahoma City Spark, which along with Cascade, are expansion teams that begin play in the 2026 season.
The AUSL is now a six-team league — the other teams include the Bandits, Blaze, Talons and Volts. The 2026 season, which begins in June, will be the league’s second.
Maya Brady has been as great at softball as her uncle was at football. At UCLA, Maya was named Pac-12 Player of the Year in 2023 and ’24, was a two-time USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year Finalist (2023-24), a three-time NFCA First Team All-American (2021, ’23, ’24), a four-time All-Pac-12 honoree and the 2020 Softball America Freshman of the Year.
She also won the Pac-12 batting title in 2023, hitting .456.
Maya Brady’s athletic prowess follows the family tradition of excellence in sports, as The Athletic has outlined. Her mom, Maureen, the oldest of Tom’s three sisters, had 29 no-hitters and 14 perfect games as a softball pitcher in high school. Julie, another sister, played college soccer at St. Mary’s and later married Boston Red Sox slugger Kevin Youkilis, who won two World Series.
Maya played eight games with the Talons in the AUSL’s inaugural season in 2025. She posted a .500 batting average with 11 hits in 22 at-bats, including a home run and 5 RBI.
Maya Brady, the most dominant athlete in the Brady family…by far! https://t.co/BUstHqAyjD
— Tom Brady (@TomBrady) March 7, 2021
