Cassy Athena remembers the moment her life changed.
During her junior year at Cal State Northridge, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The life-threatening obstacle forced her to reconsider her career aspirations and restart her life. After she recovered, she pursued photography full-time, emerging as one of the best and most well-connected photographers in the NBA world.
“It just kept taking me somewhere,” Athena told The Athletic of her passion for photography. “I just didn’t know where it was going to take me.”
Athena’s photography skills have taken her from covering the early days of the Drew League to China, and also to Washington, D.C., for the Warriors’ championship ceremony.
She has been a trailblazer in sports photography, particularly for women who, she believes, are still underrepresented in the space.
“I feel like the first three, four years of my career, if not more, were just proving that I was there for the right reasons,” Athena said. “And that’s just based on me being a female. At times, it would get very frustrating. There were certain brands and certain people that wanted me out of certain spaces, and they would use that against me. … And a lot of negative rumors, a lot of bad stuff. It would upset me and frustrate me so much. The one…
