The 2026 NBA Finals represent more than a championship clash between the San Antonio Spurs and the New York Knicks; they serve as a high-profile stage for a significant demographic shift within sports media. Among the phalanx of photographers lining the hardwood at San Antonio’s Frost Bank Center and New York’s Madison Square Garden is Sam Owens, a staff photojournalist for the San Antonio Express-News. Covering her first NBA Finals, Owens is a prominent figure in a growing movement of women documenting elite sports at the highest level, a field that was, for decades, almost exclusively the domain of men.
Owens’ journey to the baseline of the NBA Finals is a testament to both individual tenacity and a broader institutional evolution. As she navigates the grueling travel schedule of a best-of-seven series, her presence reflects a documented surge of women entering professional photography programs and subsequently ascending to the most coveted assignments in the industry. "We’ve come way far," Owens remarked, succinctly capturing the sentiment of a generation of female visual journalists who no longer view their presence at a championship event as an anomaly, but as a professional standard.
The 2026 NBA Finals Context and the Spurs’ Path
The 2026 postseason has been a whirlwind for the San Antonio Express-News photo staff. The Spurs’ resurgence, led by international sensation Victor Wembanyama, has necessitated exhaustive media coverage. To reach the Finals, the Spurs navigated a difficult Western Conference bracket, defeating rivals in Portland, Minneapolis, and Oklahoma City. Owens has been at the center of this coverage, traveling to Oklahoma City three times and making multiple trips to the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest to document the team’s progression.
The logistics of covering an NBA Finals series are immense. For home games in San Antonio, the Express-News deploys two staff photographers to capture the action from multiple angles, including floor-level perspectives and remote-controlled cameras mounted behind the backboards. For away games, the responsibility often falls on a single traveling photographer. Owens’ assignment to cover the New York legs of the series—starting with the trip to Madison Square Garden after the Knicks took Game 1 in San Antonio on June 3—underscores the trust the publication places in her technical skill and narrative eye.
A Chronology of Progress: From Lawsuits to the Baseline
The current landscape of sports photography did not emerge in a vacuum. It was forged through legal battles and the persistence of pioneers who demanded equal access to the arenas of professional athletics. To understand the significance of photographers like Owens, one must look back to the late 1970s and early 1980s.
In 1979, the Detroit Free Press hired Mary Schroeder, a move that would eventually challenge the gender-based restrictions of the era. By 1983, Schroeder was the only woman in the United States covering professional sports full-time for a major metropolitan newspaper. Her career was defined not only by her imagery but by her role as a plaintiff in a landmark lawsuit against the Detroit Lions. The litigation sought equal access for reporters and photographers of both sexes to team locker rooms, which were then closed to women, severely hindering their ability to conduct post-game interviews and capture candid moments.
The settlement of that lawsuit forced a change in NFL policy, ensuring that all media members, regardless of gender, were granted the same access. Schroeder’s career reached a pinnacle in 1984 when she captured the iconic image of Kirk Gibson celebrating his home run in Game 5 of the World Series. Her induction into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 2020 served as a formal recognition of the doors she opened for future generations.
Following Schroeder’s lead, Elsa Garrison, known professionally as Elsa, became another pivotal figure. In 1996, Garrison joined Allsport, a premier sports photo agency that was later acquired by Getty Images in 1998. Garrison became the first woman staff photographer at Getty, eventually becoming a mentor for underrepresented photographers. Her career proved that women could not only compete in sports photography but could also lead the industry’s most prestigious agencies.
The Educational Pipeline and the Getty Influence
The "heavy enrollment" of women in photography education programs, as noted by Owens, has created a robust pipeline of talent. Many of the women currently dominating the sidelines are products of top-tier journalism schools, such as the Scripps College of Communication at Ohio University and the University of Missouri.
The career of Maddie Meyer, a college classmate and roommate of Owens, illustrates this trajectory. After graduating from Ohio University, Meyer joined Getty Images in 2015. Based in Boston, she has become one of the world’s most recognized sports photographers, covering multiple Olympic Games and Super Bowls. For the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics, Getty assigned Meyer and her colleague Sarah Stier to lead the coverage of aquatics, one of the Games’ most visually demanding disciplines.
The expansion of this cohort continued into the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy, where the Getty team included Meyer, Stier, and newer hire Emilee Chinn. Throughout the 2026 NBA playoffs, Meyer (Boston), Stier (New York), and Chinn (Philadelphia) were fixtures at arenas across the East Coast, demonstrating that the presence of female photographers at elite sporting events is now a sustained industry trend rather than a series of isolated incidents.
Profile in Excellence: Sam Owens’ Professional Trajectory
Sam Owens joined the San Antonio Express-News in 2021, bringing a background in community-focused photojournalism that has informed her approach to sports. Before moving to Texas, she worked for the Evansville Courier & Press in Indiana, where she was named the 2019 Indiana Photographer of the Year by the Indiana News Photographers Association.
However, it was her coverage of the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, that cemented her reputation as an elite photojournalist. Owens documented the immediate tragedy and the long, painful aftermath for the Uvalde community. Her ability to navigate sensitive environments with empathy and technical precision earned her the 2022 Star Photojournalist of the Year award from the Headliners Foundation of Texas.
In the world of sports, Owens often goes by "Sam" professionally, a name that sometimes leads to mistaken assumptions about her gender before she arrives on-site. "People see my name and assume that I’m a guy," she noted, finding humor in the lingering stereotypes of the profession. Despite the male-dominated history of the field, Owens emphasizes that her experiences with peers and competitors have been overwhelmingly positive, defined by mutual respect for the craft.
The Technical Rigor of the NBA Finals
Covering the NBA Finals requires more than an eye for composition; it demands the stamina of an athlete and the technical proficiency of an IT specialist. Owens’ game-day ritual begins more than three hours before the opening tipoff.
The pre-game window is used for several critical tasks:
- Equipment Setup: This includes positioning remote cameras on the "stanchions" (the supports for the backboards) to capture overhead dunks and rebounds.
- Technology Integration: Photographers must ensure that their cameras are linked to high-speed transmission lines. In modern sports journalism, speed is paramount; images are often filed to editors and published online while the game is still in progress.
- Visual Documentation: Pre-game warmups, player arrivals, and fan interactions provide the "feature" photos that round out a gallery.
During the game, Owens is constantly "filing from the floor." Using specialized software and Ethernet connections at the baseline, she tags and sends her best frames to the Express-News photo desk in near real-time. This process requires her to split her attention between the fast-paced action on the court and the digital interface of her camera, ensuring that the publication’s digital platforms are updated instantly.
Broader Implications and the Future of the Field
The visibility of women like Owens, Meyer, and Stier has significant implications for the future of sports media. As women take on more prominent roles in visual storytelling, the perspective of sports coverage broadens. This shift is also reflected in industry accolades. In May 2025, the Pro Football Hall of Fame Photo Contest honored several women—including Abigail Dean, Kathryn Riley, and Stephanie VanWagoner—for their excellence in action and feature photography, further validating the impact of female photographers in traditionally male-centric sports like football.
The normalization of women in these roles also provides a roadmap for the next generation. Owens, despite the physical toll of a grueling playoff schedule and the minor setbacks of a head cold during the Finals, recognizes her role as a mentor. Once the 2026 champion is crowned and the cameras are packed away, she will join the ranks of veteran photographers capable of guiding the next wave of newcomers.
The narrative of women in sports photography has moved past the era of "firsts" and into an era of "excellence." While the history of pioneers like Mary Schroeder remains a vital foundation, the work of Sam Owens at the 2026 NBA Finals demonstrates that the barrier to entry has been replaced by a high bar of professional achievement—one that women are meeting and exceeding on a nightly basis across the world of sports.
