Raised in Melbourne, Perko played netball and soccer before playing Australian rules football. At thirteen, Perkins was told she would no longer be able to play contact sports due to a spinal disc herniation, so she concentrated on netball for the next three years. However, she decided to start playing Australian rules football at sixteen, joining the Eastern Devils’ youth side in 2009 and becoming a two-time Victorian under-18 representative before playing in the Devils’ senior side in the Victorian Women’s Football League (VWFL) in 2012.
In 2016, she kicked fifty-two goals and finished third in the leading goalkicker award, behind Moana Hope and Katie Brennan, and was named in the VWFL team of the year. In the eighteen months before being recruited, she lost forty kilograms to fulfill her dream of playing AFL football.
In this podcast, we discussed:
- About Sarah Perkins
- How Sarah’s brother and neighbor inspired her to start playing footy
- Sarah’s footy positions
- People who supported and influenced Sarah’s footy career
- How Sarah got drafted and how her footy career started
- Her greatest surprise and challenges she faced as she joined the footy club
- How she stays motivated and get better
- How her VFL schedule and workload looks like
- Sarah explains offleague conditioning and when is it used
- Her recovery routine after a game
- Her plans for 2021 VFL and AFLW
Connect with Sarah Perkins
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/perko29/