Weipa footy star Delphina Day has been announced as a 2025 ABC Heywire winner. Photo: Supplied.
Just six years after picking up a Sherrin for the first time, a Weipa Australian football star’s inspiring journey will take her all the way to Canberra to be a voice for her community.
Eighteen-year-old Delphina Day was announced as one of the winners of the 2025 ABC Heywire competition last Wednesday after her story was selected as one of 38 out of hundreds of entries across the nation to represent her pocket of Australia.
“It’s just such a surreal feeling; I just did it because one of my teachers encouraged me to submit and see if anything comes out of it, and I just never pictured myself in this situation today,” she said.
ABC Heywire, a national storytelling competition for regional, rural and remote youth, attracts hundreds of young people aged 16-22 who are looking to drive projects for their often unheard and under-represented communities.
The winners will attend the Heywire Regional Youth Summit in Canberra early next year, where their ideas aimed at improving the lives of young people in remote Australia will be presented at Parliament House before the young people take their ideas back to their communities.
For Ms Day, those ideas will stem from her passion for AFL and how it can change lives.
She said she had always been a lover of all sports, having tried netball, swimming, gymnastics, soccer, BMX, speedway racing, and even cheerleading, but when the AFL Cape York clinic came to town when she was 12, she never looked back.
“I’d never ever touched an AFL ball in my life, but when I picked it up, it was just like it was meant to be,” she said.
“I always knew when I grew up, I’d want to do something with my sport, I just didn’t quite know what it was at a young age because I tried so many, and when I found AFL, I just knew.
“In a weird way, you could say it’s like an addiction; some people are addicted to substances, but I’m addicted to footy.”
AFL Cape York game development team member Matt Mellahn, who ran the clinic that awoke Ms Day’s love of the sport, said she was a natural from day one.
“I do remember her quite well; she was at St Joey’s at the time and she was a very strong AFL player from the start,” he said.
“She was one of the first girls that really stood out, and we’re pretty spoiled with the talent that we get across the Cape.
“She’s a lovely girl and she deserves everything she gets, because she’s a wonderful and talented young lady.”
Ms Day, who was adopted by parents Scott and Kris Wallace at a young age, said footy helped her find her way when she felt lost in her identity.
“As an Indigenous kid, I suppose stuck between two worlds, living with white parents and being black, I was looked down on by my Indigenous community but also judged by the Weipa community,” she recalled.
“It was just so hard; I always just felt stuck and really lost, and footy helped me so much mentally.”
Despite the hardships, she said she would not have had it any other way, and thanked her parents for everything they had done to support her dreams.
Now, she encouraged other young people to go after their dreams, letting nothing and no one stop them, just as her parents had taught her.
“My biggest life lesson is that there’s going to be so many people in your life that are going to tell you that you can’t and you won’t make it, but you’ve just got to use that negative fuel and turn it into something that pushes you, so that at the end of the day, you can walk away knowing that you’ve proved them wrong,” she reflected.
