Curry, Lebron, D-wade & DRAKE?!? She's photographed your favorite NBA players & celebrities but few people know she survived a brain tumor that almost derailed everything. The greatest struggles are what make you a GOAT. Cassy is one of the strongest and realest ladies out there and she's still breaking barriers & living proof that there's no limits to what you can achieve in the world. You can see why everyone considers getting a Cassy Athena picture as a sign of making it to the big time. The resume speaks for itself. We see you Cassy.
Follow @playmaker & @Cassyathenaphoto
Follow @playmaker & @Cassyathenaphoto
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SportsTranscript
00:00 (soft music)
00:03 What is my purpose?
00:04 Like I could have died at 21 years old.
00:06 Like what is my purpose?
00:08 At that time I was just coasting through life.
00:09 I was going to school, trying to get my degree,
00:11 figure out what's next.
00:12 Now I was like, okay, I need to,
00:14 I have some like fiery passion I need to find in my life
00:17 and figure out what my greater purpose is
00:19 that I'm here on earth.
00:21 I felt like it changed everything.
00:22 It brought me closer to God.
00:24 It brought me closer to my family,
00:26 but it also just made me more thankful to be alive.
00:29 (soft music)
00:31 All right, let's do this.
00:41 When I was a junior in college
00:44 and I was in art class one day,
00:46 I got this horrible headache and I never got headaches.
00:49 And it was during midterms, I wasn't sleeping a lot,
00:52 but when I would, you know, turn my head,
00:53 I started blacking out.
00:55 My classmates, they said,
00:57 "Hey, you should go down to the school doctor
00:59 "and check it out."
01:00 So I went there, the nurse, she said,
01:02 "Oh no, you're just tired from midterms.
01:05 "You haven't been sleeping.
01:06 "I will have the doctor come in."
01:07 Then the doctor comes in and he was like,
01:09 "It could be from midterms
01:11 "or you could have a brain tumor."
01:13 And I was just like, how did it go from like,
01:15 I'm tired from not sleeping to it could be a tumor.
01:18 So they did like a CT scan and they said,
01:22 "Okay, we found something.
01:24 "It's in the balance part of your brain.
01:25 "We don't know how you could walk.
01:27 "We don't know how you could do any of these functions."
01:29 And I thought they were joking
01:30 because I was like, there's no way.
01:31 I didn't feel, you know, any different.
01:33 I'm able to walk.
01:34 I played sports.
01:35 I do art.
01:36 And it just felt like, like, wow.
01:39 Like everything at once hit me.
01:40 I was like, okay, I have this tumor, like what's next?
01:43 So I had to get a few different opinions
01:45 and make sure it was a tumor.
01:46 And it ended up being a little bigger
01:49 than they thought it was.
01:50 It was benign.
01:51 Thankfully, I didn't have cancer.
01:53 And they knew that right away,
01:55 but it was still something.
01:56 They didn't know how fast it was growing
01:57 is affecting my balance.
01:59 And then a few months later in July,
02:02 they had to shave my head.
02:04 You know, they had to do surgery.
02:05 I had 25 stables in the back of my head.
02:08 And then because I had no balance issues before the surgery,
02:11 after they took the tumor out,
02:12 they said, "You're gonna have really bad balance issues
02:15 "because they're gonna be poking around that area."
02:17 So when they took it out,
02:18 I mean, imagine spinning in a circle 10 times
02:21 and trying to stand still,
02:22 but every day, all day long.
02:23 So I was just sick, vertigo, dizzy.
02:26 But that whole process, it just made me realize,
02:29 okay, like God saved my life
02:31 because if I didn't have that headache,
02:33 I would have never found the tumor
02:34 and it could have gotten a lot worse later down the line.
02:37 My earliest memory of a camera,
02:40 I'd say is my dad always had cameras around.
02:43 He loved to take pictures of me and my brother
02:45 just to capture memories.
02:46 So I feel like I just grew up with a camera around,
02:49 whether he was doing videos or pictures.
02:51 I would kind of take whatever cameras my dad had
02:53 and I would try to shoot stuff.
02:55 I feel like from a very young age,
02:56 I started with art and drawing and everything.
03:00 And then that kind of led into photography
03:02 as I got a little older
03:03 because I just love being able to capture memories
03:05 of my friends and share it.
03:07 And then as I started getting into high school,
03:09 social media was starting to come around.
03:12 So then it was fun
03:13 because I was able to share my photos with other people
03:16 and then they could share the photos on the internet.
03:19 And so I feel like I was able to really kind of explore
03:22 that side of it when I was in high school.
03:24 My only dream at that point had been to work
03:34 in the visual effects industry and work in entertainment.
03:36 So I had a hard time thinking of what else I could do,
03:40 but I just felt like I had a bigger purpose
03:42 and something outside of this.
03:44 I felt like I wasn't fulfilled in my day-to-day job.
03:47 And it was like an emotional roller coaster.
03:50 I would say almost every day I come home from work,
03:52 I would cry for months and months and months.
03:54 I just hated everything that I was doing.
03:58 I love the creative side of it and I love the process,
04:00 but I just didn't like the atmosphere
04:02 and I just felt like something else was calling me,
04:05 but I didn't really know what.
04:06 I started hearing about this league in LA
04:15 called the Drew League.
04:16 And I was actually a part of a Laker message board
04:19 at the time, a bunch of Laker fans.
04:21 And they were like, "Hey, we should go down there."
04:23 I heard there's NBA players playing at this small gym.
04:26 And so a group of us decided to go down there
04:28 and nobody else showed up from the message board.
04:31 I was the only person that showed up.
04:33 So I was by myself and luckily I had brought
04:35 the camera that I had.
04:36 It wasn't super high technology, but it was good enough.
04:40 And my first day was James Harden, DeMar DeRozan,
04:43 O.J. Mayo, the game.
04:45 There were so many different big players there.
04:48 Part of it is I had a taste of something
04:50 that I was passionate about,
04:51 but there was just no way to monetize it.
04:53 'Cause at the time as a photographer,
04:55 you could only make money if you work for a newspaper,
04:57 if you work for a media outlet.
04:59 And I was just taking free pictures
05:01 at this summer Pro-Am League of all these,
05:03 I mean, amazing players, but nobody,
05:06 the outlets didn't want it.
05:07 You know, I would try to pitch it to different companies
05:09 and they're like, "Nobody cares what players do
05:10 in the off season.
05:12 Nobody cares about what they're wearing.
05:13 Nobody cares about their shoes."
05:16 And to me, that's all I had access to.
05:17 So I just kept capturing these moments.
05:21 On top of all of those struggles,
05:23 another layer is being a female around everybody.
05:27 And being a female that stands out,
05:29 like I'm tall, I'm blonde, I wear makeup.
05:32 And I feel like a lot of people,
05:34 especially when I started shooting like local,
05:37 not just at the Drew League,
05:38 just any local event I was going to,
05:40 a lot of people kept questioning my intentions.
05:42 Like, what are you really here for?
05:43 Why would a pretty girl be down here
05:46 taking free pictures of NBA players?
05:48 Like, what do you really want?
05:49 And so I had a lot of like negative stereotypes
05:52 working against me.
05:53 And it was just like so frustrating
05:55 because I really just wanted to take photos.
05:57 I didn't have any ulterior motives.
05:59 And I felt like it took years and years
06:03 before I was able to like establish myself in that world
06:06 to where people said, "Okay, like she's actually here
06:10 'cause she wants to do this."
06:11 And so I felt, and I still feel like to this day,
06:15 I see a lot of other,
06:16 especially guys don't have those issues.
06:18 Like they just kind of like float and breeze by
06:20 when it comes to certain issues like that.
06:22 They could just go to a player's hotel room
06:24 and edit with them and go talk to them
06:25 or go in the guy's locker room and shoot.
06:28 And for me, I have to be like aware of my situations
06:31 and be aware how I present myself
06:33 or how I talk to certain people.
06:35 And there's a million other challenges that come with
06:37 just weird interactions.
06:39 But I feel like that was in the beginning,
06:43 one of the biggest struggles that I had never even thought
06:45 about being an issue.
06:46 - Drew leave gyms at UCLA, you know, random high school.
06:50 So I'm just like, yo, there can't be one person
06:53 that does all this shit because it's way too much.
06:56 So I think like that's something to send them like,
06:58 yo, she really be grinding.
07:01 - Yeah, I remember that was the first thing you said to me.
07:03 Like, I thought this was a company.
07:05 Like this is one person.
07:09 - The entertainers, they kind of need cameras around them.
07:12 Athletes don't.
07:12 Athletes just need to go to workouts, play games,
07:15 do well and go home.
07:16 They don't need to have anybody
07:17 in their personal lives, honestly.
07:20 It took them a while to kind of open up,
07:22 but as they would, I never took it for granted.
07:24 I just felt like they're giving me such intimate access
07:27 into their lives with my camera.
07:29 And the last thing I'd ever want to do
07:30 is violate their trust.
07:32 And I just thought about putting myself in that position.
07:34 How would I feel if I allowed somebody in my life?
07:37 And then they just put me on blast.
07:39 I think a big part of starting off as a female
07:42 in this industry or any industry
07:44 is having the confidence that you can do it
07:46 and that you deserve to be in those rooms.
07:49 I think a lot of times I have come across women before me
07:51 that were photographers or professionals,
07:53 and it felt like they had earned their spot
07:56 and there's only room for one woman
07:58 and everybody else is like competition.
08:00 I don't think that that's the case.
08:02 I feel like it's better to uplift each other
08:04 than to try to fight people and tear people down.
08:07 You have to toe the line of being professional,
08:11 but also being your authentic self.
08:13 I love my style.
08:14 I love to wear different sneakers.
08:17 I love to play around with my looks.
08:19 And then I also love to take the best photos possible.
08:22 So I think balancing those two things out
08:25 and really just being confident in being yourself,
08:28 but also understanding that there are gonna be
08:30 stereotypes against you and just making sure
08:33 that you can prove those wrong without being mean
08:35 or bitter about it.
08:37 I think that's the best way to approach just anything.
08:41 (upbeat music)
08:43 (upbeat music)
08:46 (upbeat music)
08:48 (upbeat music)
08:51 you