Cassandra Cooper
Cassandra Cooper is a 20-year-old freediving Competitor and Instructor born in Kelowna, British Columbia. Growing up in the Okanagan, Cassandra often spent her free time outdoors. In the winters, she spent her time up at the mountains alpine skiing and her summers by the lake. At an early age, it was clear that Cassandra enjoyed seeking out new experiences independently and desired the way many solitary activities challenged her mind and grew her relationship with herself.
On her 18th birthday, Cassandra moved to a small northern village in Khon Kaen, Thailand where she taught English. After completing her semester, she traveled to the southern islands of Thailand where she discovered freediving. It was on the island of Koh Lanta that Cassandra took her first freediving course and was fascinated by the sport and the lifestyle that came with it. Once she returned home, freediving never was too far from thought. Over a year after her first encounter with diving, her previous experience sparked an interest that would lead her to her current life where she now pursues a life of Freediving full time.
Determined to learn more about the Freediving community, she met with several experienced speros and freedivers living on the West Coast of British Columbia. She made the decision to wait out the winter in Canada by beginning her training in Egypt before returning home to the cold waters of the Canadian Pacific. However, once she arrived in the small town of Dahab, Egypt on the coast of the Red Sea, she was able to train alongside a large, world-class community of freedivers. This drew her interest to not only learn, but to compete as well.
Within her first year of training, Cassandra's progression was rapid, after three competitions and nearly 6 months of depth training later, Cassandra competed in the 2021 Freediving World Cup and now holds second place in the discipline CWTB in Canada. In the Dynamic disciplines, she attended the AIDA Blue Ocean Pool Competition and now holds the DYNB national record at 156m. She also holds second place in the static discipline with a time of 6’18”. Cassandra's freediving is motivated by an intuition that freediving would continually offer her tremendous growth as both an athlete and a person.