{"id":39154,"date":"2018-08-22T21:41:38","date_gmt":"2018-08-22T11:41:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.afldraftcentral.com.au\/?p=39154"},"modified":"2020-04-23T07:00:23","modified_gmt":"2020-04-22T21:00:23","slug":"family-oriented-sonia-dorizzi-goes-from-shock-to-success-in-football-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/2018\/08\/22\/family-oriented-sonia-dorizzi-goes-from-shock-to-success-in-football-career\/","title":{"rendered":"Family-oriented Sonia Dorizzi goes from shock to success in football career"},"content":{"rendered":"

WEST Australian (WA) ruck, <\/span>Sonia Dorizzi <\/b>started playing football when she was 15 years old. <\/span><\/p>\n

She would spend lots of time with her family kicking a football around or smashing a cricket ball, and she was all ears when she found out her cousin was playing for a local club, wanting to try out her first competitive sport. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think in replacing of sports, we were just with family instead,\u201d the WA ruck said. \u201cWe played sport altogether but not at a club level. \u201cI always loved footy, I always wanted to play but just didn\u2019t really have the opportunity. \u201cA lot of girls play Auskick but I didn\u2019t so I found out about my cousin playing at a club level, that was when I was 15, so I went down, looked at myself then got into that along with my sister and started playing for South Fremantle Women\u2019s Football Club.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Dorizzi continued to play with her sister in WA\u2019s KickStart squad, which is a program where Indigenous players get to experience being in an elite AFL environment. She admits she was initially shocked about getting selected for the squad at such a young age. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo playing football in my first year, everyone\u2019s kind of like where have you come from?,\u201d Dorizzi said. \u201cMe and my sister, we both didn\u2019t really know. \u201cInitially, we made the KickStart team back in 2014, that was in our first year of football, and then from that, we just had so much people say to us \u2018you should try out for 18s\u2019 and sort of doing all this stuff that we didn\u2019t know about at all. \u201cI felt like I just wasn\u2019t supposed to be there, I felt like I was too young. \u201cI was 16 and there was other 16 year-olds and a couple of people that were a year younger than me but I just felt like it was kind of like a shock. \u201cLike you didn\u2019t expect yourself to be there and now you\u2019re there, you\u2019re kind of just like woah.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ever since then, her football career has grown in leaps and bounds, as she has gone from not realising how much of an honour playing for her state was to immersing herself in the privilege. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was such an honour (playing for WA) and I didn\u2019t really grasp that whole concept until much later when I was like it actually is an honour to play for your state,\u201d Dorizzi said. \u201cI was kind of just like yeah, we\u2019re playing for our state, cool, when I was younger. \u201cBut now I\u2019m realising that it actually is an honour and a big thing. \u201cI probably didn\u2019t get that a lot when I was younger. \u201cI kind of just played just for fun really.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

She cannot put her finger on just one memorable moment in her career, but has just loved playing for WA overall, as she has made everlasting friendships. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI always love playing for WA to be honest,\u201d Dorizzi said. \u201cMaking it a good memory, a lot of things contribute to it. \u201cFor example, Danielle Ponter<\/strong> from the Northern Territory, I met her back when I played KickStart in 2014 and from then, I didn\u2019t see her and I rucked against her back then and coming to now, I had national academy with her and then my All Stars programs and stuff. \u201cThem things, like seeing the girls, is what makes it better. \u201cYeah you have your WA team but it\u2019s also good to know girls from Victoria and Queensland and New South Wales and Tasmania, you know, wherever else the girls are from. \u201cI think all them different academies and All Star matches is what contributes to having good footy moments.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Her good footy moments began right from her first year of football because she knew straight away that this was the sport for her, and she never wanted to leave. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI always did want to play sport but I never just really had the opportunity to,\u201d the 19 year-old said. \u201cMy mum and dad never really put me into a sport back when I was younger. \u201cSo playing football, when I was playing my first year, I was like I love it, I\u2019m playing again next year. \u201cI was kind of stuck there, they wouldn\u2019t let me go. \u201cI had no choice but to stay there I guess.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Dorizzi now feels comfortable in the elite environment and has AFLW on her mind as a realistic goal. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI do see it as a real goal,\u201d she said. \u201cGrowing up, I was finding it hard where I could fit it but I definitely want to be there and go there as a goal.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WEST Australian (WA) ruck, Sonia Dorizzi started playing football when she was 15 years old. She would spend lots of time with her family kicking a football around or smashing a cricket ball, and she was all ears when she found out her cousin was playing for a local club, wanting to try out her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":39155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[278,8,11614,3131,137],"tags":[157,4745,3573,2113,1715,6668,1921,11630],"class_list":["post-39154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature-articles","category-news","category-south-fremantle","category-western-australia","category-womens","tag-aflw","tag-danielle-ponter","tag-kickstart","tag-sonia-dorizzi","tag-south-fremantle","tag-south-fremantle-womens-football-club","tag-western-australia","tag-western-australia-features"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}