A star both on and off the field, 18-year-old Delphina Day will fight for young girls in her community to have more opportunities in sport when she attends the Heywire Regional Youth Summit in Canberra this week. Photo: Supplied.
After sharing her inspiring sporting journey with the world, a Weipa footy star is now gearing up to fight for more opportunities for girls in remote communities.
Eighteen-year-old Delphina Day will attend the Heywire Regional Youth Summit in Canberra this week, from 7 February, after she was selected as one of 38 winners of the 2025 ABC Heywire competition in December.
“I’m not nervous or anything, but it’s still very surreal,” she said.
“I feel like it won’t feel real until I’m actually on the plane to Canberra.”
Over six days, the young leaders will share their ideas aimed at improving the lives of young people in remote Australia, before presenting them at Parliament House.
For Ms Day, she said she would like to see more sporting opportunities for teenage girls in Weipa.
As someone who previously said AFL helped her mentally when she felt “stuck and really lost”, she believed if more girls had the chance to continue sports in community, it could change their futures.
“My point that I definitely want to bring up when I’m with all the politicians is that there should be more opportunities for young females in sports in rural areas,” she said.
“Once you hit that 12, 13 mark, there’s nothing there; there’s nothing in rural communities for females anymore, it’s all for the boys.
“That’s definitely been my experience as well, and I think that’s a strong reason why my mum and dad sent me to boarding school, because there were no sporting opportunities for girls once you hit around 12.”
She explained that in her community, sporting teams were all co-ed as children, but at a certain age, they had to split, and the only available teams were boys’ teams.
“Growing up in Weipa, you do your mixed sports with everything; you do everything with the boys if you want to participate in sports,” Ms Day explained.
“Once you pretty much hit 12, they don’t do them mixed anymore because the boys are growing, and they think it’s unsafe for females to be participating with the males, but I feel like no one’s interested in starting stuff up for the girls.”
Ms Day said she was lucky to have the opportunity to go to boarding school in Cairns and continue to pursue AFL, but not everyone had that chance.
“I think what also stops a lot of people from taking that opportunity is having to be so far away from home, so I think it’s important that they have the chance in community as well.”
