Stella-Louise is 10 years old and in Year 4 at MPS. She’s a current Red Devil junior and she’s the only girl in her Under 10s tackle side.
Not only physically is Stella a diminutive and tenacious little player who loves her Rugby, she has a big soft heart and is the first person to put her hand up and help the opposition if they are short.
Daughter of Jeremy and Teigan Martin and sister to Hendrix and Cooper, she embodies everything that junior sport should be. Inclusive, fun, nurturing and team spirited.
Devils Prop forward and stalwart and Junior Devils major organiser and father Jeremey said, “She loves it. She’s the other half of the reason why I got the club going, her and Coop.
Jeremy and his tight knit committee have been so successful with Junior Rugby’s revival in Harden that there are now 110 regions with more this week.
“We have 110 all up. Three years now and we have 110 kids registered.
“It’s actually taken off this year, I wanted to hit that 100, but we had about 77 come two days out of the first round, and then we’re in to round 5 now, and we’ve still got regos coming through. We had four this week.
“We had a home game last weekend and I think out of all the competitive age groups, we only had the one loss. 16s went down to Young by 2 points.
“All grades are going very well, and Stella’s grade won both. She’s always the first to put her hand up. Penny Lucas actually wrote it the other day on the post that Stella is always the first put her hand up to go to the other team when they’re a bit short. So they can still play a game.”
“Sometimes being kids, they don’t want to put their hand up, but Stella’s first to put her hand up, she’s done it three or four times this year, and they normally try and share it around, so they get to halftime and tell her, who wants to go over to the other team and Stella goes, oh, I will just stay here.”
“She played a full game for Leeton the other day and at Harden she played a full game for Tumut.
She just loves playing footy.
Stella and tens of thousand of kids put in applications “The application was actually closing and Teigan stumbled across it, and there was obviously a warning saying there was going to be over 20 to 30,000 kids apply for this, so it was 100 words or less and it was a big opportunity if they got selected.
“We got an email not last week, but the week before saying that Stella had been selected because they liked her story and her story came from Stella, which was essentially what position she played and why rugby meant so much to her, what running the ball out would mean and essentially she said that her Dad got the juniors back up and running, so everybody can have a chance to play rugby and that she loves her rugby and it would be awesome to run the ball out.
“She got selected. Cooper was one of the runners up in the finalists too. Knowing she was one of the only girls in her tackle side. They were pretty keen to let her do it.
“They came and got us around 7.30, they gave us gold tickets for the family to watch the rugby. They presented Stella with a jersey, a Wallaby’s jersey to put on. They took us down to the side of the field and they had a bit of a rehearsal of what she had to do and then they just let her sit there and soak it all in, watched the boys train and then they let her watch the boys run out.
“As the boys ran out she was right on the sideline while they were running out and then got to watch the National Anthem and then they called her over and gave her the ball and they raced her out. They were running a little bit behind schedule and she was going to wave, but they said quick run it out and run it back.
“So she ran it out, dropped it off, and then as she went past, she got to wave to the Wallabies on the bench and we watched the kickoff from the sideline and then we had to make our way back to our seats and watch the game.
“Rob Valentini is Stella’s favourite Wallaby.
“She wore her jersey for three days in a row, and she’s still got it on. It shows you how proud she was to do that.
“It was a massive opportunity and they were all lovely too, all the production staff, the gentleman, Ben Wood took her out on the field, gave her a high five, told her what to do. It was very structured, but the one thing that upset the whole town was, we told everybody it was happening and as it went to happen they went to an ad break on WIN and Stan sports. A lot of people were a bit upset that they were ready to watch Stella run out and didn’t get to, but the amount of Harden people that were actually at the game and messaged me. I had Matt Ryan, the Fairfield-Smiths, the McFadyens, there was the Humes.
There was a lot down there and they all messaged and said Stella did a great job.
“For a 10 year old girl, it was a big thing. She likes showing the video and it’s a memory she will keep forever. She wanted to wear her hat, that was the big one. You are not meant to wear any branded stuff before they have their own sponsors, but they said she could wear her Red Devils hat and when they announced her name they announced her from the Harden Junior Red Devils.
“She got to fly the flag as she went out there because, as you know, we are a pretty proud Harden rugby family.
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