The Age
before the first bounce about how she felt when she landed the big job.
“I’m so stoked,” she told .
“Literally, when I got the call about my appointment I literally cried.”
She was flown to Melbourne from Darwin with her mum and worked the match alongside her umpiring mentor, — something she was particularly fired up about.
“I’m just really excited to umpire with John Howorth in my AFLW game,” Stark said. “Just debuting and having lots of fun and having him by my side, that’s definitely what I’m looking forward to.”
Bloody hell. Imagine the playground chat when you’re sitting around talking about what you’re up to for the weekend.
When I was 16, I was writing pseudo-poetic MSN screen names and teaching myself basic HTML so I could have a music player on my MySpace page. Not running around with a whistle, calling free kicks and throw-ins at one of Melbourne’s biggest stadiums.
Stark began umpiring netball in 2018 — which she started playing when she was eight years old — and made a switch to AFL in 2021 where she is also a staunch player.
She won the Northern Territory Football League’s (NTFL) U15s Girls best and fairest and leading goal kicker medals in 2020/21. Stark then backed it up and took out the TIO NTFL best and fairest medal in the U18s competition this year.
Honestly, it’s so powerful to see young Aussies — girls especially — seeing umpiring as a dream career. The AFL leagues are now at a point where umpires have mascots too, encouraging kids to see the green team as something to strive for and essentially creating a much healthier perspective on one of the toughest jobs in the game.
You do love to see it.
John Howorth
The post A 16 Y.O. Smashed Records By Umpiring An AFL-Level Game & Meanwhile Mum Still Does My Washing appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
