Teenage gun D'Addario wins 2024 McSherry Medal

Carys D'Addario and Lily Paterson ended up being two of the most exciting emerging on-ballers in the WAFLW competition in 2024, and that was celebrated at the McSherry Medal awards night with D'Addario narrowly claiming the fairest and best award.

Highlighting two of the most exciting young talents in West Australian football, D'Addario and Paterson both took the leap to becoming standout on-ballers in the 2024 WAFLW season. 

That saw them occupy the top two spots in McSherry Medal voting to wrap up the season for Swan Districts with D'Addario taking out the fairest and best award with 94 votes to win just ahead of Paterson who finished with 83.

The award is named after Mandy McSherry who was the foundation captain, a two-time reserves premiership coach and West Australian representative from Swan Districts.

Swan Districts finished the home and away season in fourth position on the WAFLW ladder with an 8-6 record and having won the last two matches to book in a spot in the finals.

Swan Districts might have lost that first semi-final match up against West Perth at Joondalup's Pentanet Stadium, but there was plenty to celebrate about the performances from the team throughout the 2024 season.

It proved to be a thrilling vote count to determine the McSherry Medal winner for 2024 and it was 17-year-old D'Addario who prevailed having emerged as one of the best ball winners in the competition with 19.2 possessions.

She also finished in the top 10 for tackles throughout the season with 73 of them from 13 games.

Then there was Paterson who finished runner-up in the fairest and best voting and having recently turned 18 years of age, she became one of the breakout stars of not only Swan Districts in 2024, but the entire WAFLW competition.

Paterson ended up as the leading possession winner in the WAFLW in 2024 with 363 disposals across the 15 games which ended up at an average of 24.2.

That included twice having games of 37 possessions along the way and on top of that, Paterson was second in the competition for kicks with 206, second for handpasses with 157 and third for marks with 63.

Third place in McSherry Medal voting went to Kayley King who was backing up a season in 2023 where she finished runner-up to Ruby Mahony.

Meanwhile, the Chelsea Randall Medal as the fairest and best winner for the Swan Districts Rogers Cup team in 2024 went the way of Larissa MacGregor.

There were dual runner-up winners as well in fairest and best voting from the Rogers Cup team with Karri Parnham and Tannah Lee both ending the season on 45 votes apiece.

Another award presented on Friday night was the WAFLW Club Person of the Year and that went to Phil Spencer in recognition of his continued outstanding contributions to the Swan Districts Football Club's women's program.