A breakout star in last season's Netball Super League, Cassie Howard is ready to pick up where she left off in 2025.
After just two appearances for Leeds Rhinos in her debut NSL season in 2023, last year saw the mid-courter brought into the main squad, where she quickly cemented herself within the starting line-up.
Scooping up the Rhinos' fans' player of the season award, Howard - who began her netball career with London Pulse - also picked up the Champion award from the coaches in recognition of her commitment to netball.
Off the court, Howard studies Liberal Arts at the University of Leeds and helped raise money for charity when she slept outside on the floor of Rhinos stadium at the Big Sleep.
Holding a strong interest in the justice system and preventing racial injustice, Howard plans to pursue law in the future.
“I’m not sure where my interest came from,” the Croydon native said. “I saw a really good film called Just Mercy and that was about someone in America who was wrongly accused of a crime and given the death penalty.
“And it was about a lawyer being able to exonerate them because they knew he was innocent. I think that was incredibly moving because it was a true story and having been to America and experienced what it has been like in England after George Floyd’s death.
“That coupled with a lot of the documentaries I have watched, and I have always found history really interesting, looking at the history of race across England and in America and then seeing more current movements as well.
“That has been a big driver of my wanting to make a change and wanting to contribute to improving the system.”
Howard is part Guyanese, with her grandmother moving to the UK from the Caribbean as part of the Windrush generation.
She added: “I am really proud of my heritage and my mum has always instilled that in me and my granny’s Guyanese culture has always been a big part of our family because she was the head of the family.
“She was the one bringing all our family together and family is hugely important to me.
“Against Pulse, they were there with their pom poms and all my younger cousins were there screaming for me. I couldn’t be where I am in netball without my whole family, my parents especially and both my sisters are netballers as well.
"My heritage from my granny is something I am really proud of and so that has been something that I have been really interested to learn about and I’ve been really passionate about race in Britain and the way that people should be treated and the way the system needs to change to stop marginalising certain communities.”
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