Bega's Daytona Porter receives prestigious Olympic Change-maker award

On December 8, the 17-year-old was invited to an award ceremony held at the Royal Mint in Canberra, to collect an exclusively minted medal from the Australian Olympic Committee.

Daytona said she had been deeply touched for being "noticed and acknowledged" by her school who had nominated her and still couldn't believe she'd won the prestigious award.

"If you had asked me at the start of the year where I would be, never in a million years would I have thought it'd be here," she said.

The 24 chosen recipients had been invited to stay in Canberra for two days ahead of the award ceremony, during this time they were split into four groups to discuss areas that youth wanted to see change in sport, in the lead up to the Brisbane Olympics games in 2032.

"We were split into four topics which included sustainability, gender equity, diversity and rural and regional areas, my group was sustainability," she said.

Daytona said while they were brainstorming, she'd brought up an idea to discuss sustainability in athlete and community engagement with sports, not just environmental sustainability.

"If you don't sustain community engagement the sport will die off, so maybe we need to think of things like recycling old Olympic gear to rural areas, so that kids can get inspired and involved with the sport and keep it going," she said.

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Once they'd gathered up their ideas and thoughts around their given topic, each group presented their points in a video presentation, before a forum of Australian Olympic representatives.

When presenting their ideas at the forum, Daytona approached chief executive officer of the Australian Olympic Committee, Matt Carroll with a thought provoking metaphor.

"At the start of the video that we had put together for our presentation, I was talking about a football representing the world we live in and the people who held it were in charge and they had to protect this ball and sustain it," Daytona said.

"At the end of our video I walked up to Matt Carroll with a football and handed it to him saying, 'the ball is now in your hands' and the whole room went silent and then they began to cheer."

Daytona had been nominated for the award by staff at the Bega High School who recognised her recent accomplishments as one of the few young female referees in the state.

Her nomination certainly caught the judges' eyes because she made it to the final round with 24 other students, having been selected out of more than a thousand nominations across the country.

Daytona was told she'd been selected as an award recipient by a group of Australian Olympians who commended her for having the Olympic spirit; which included the sense of friendship, sportsmanship and the drive to strive for excellence both on and off the playing field.

"Twenty-four of us young leaders from Year 10 to 12, were invited and it was pretty cool to be acknowledged for changing our communities and schools through sport," she said.

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Daytona was also commended on her leadership skills and ways of driving positive change in her school and local community.

In the last 4 months, Daytona has been invited to referee junior games at multiple rugby league grand final events across the state, which included the Walgett knockout, the Katrina Fanning Cup and the Koori Knockout.

When Daytona wasn't refereeing rugby league games, she was actively involved in her community - be it through her work with the local PCYC branch as a junior activities officer or her involvement in school activities at Bega High, as one of the newly elected school captains.

"For me it's about doing my best to inspire others to do their best because that's where it all started for me," she said.

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Daytona said if she had one person to thank, it was her father, who had been her biggest supporter and mentor.

"He's driven me to every game and he doesn't need to now because I have my P license but he still does and it's because he wants to be there," she said.

"He does so much for me and there's no way I can ever thank him enough for it."

When asked what goals she hoped to achieve in the future, Daytona answered her dream was to get into Australia's national rugby league competition for female players (the NRLW) and eventually in the NRL.

"I really want to be in the NRL one day, I want a taste of being in the big stadium, in front of the big crowds," she said.

"It's going to be hard to get into the NRL, but I'm going to train hard for it."

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