{"id":291841,"date":"2025-11-18T04:36:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T04:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/291841\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T04:36:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T04:36:09","slug":"gippslands-willem-duursma-set-to-become-fourth-family-member-to-join-afl-aflw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/291841\/","title":{"rendered":"Gippsland’s Willem Duursma set to become fourth family member to join AFL\/AFLW"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, Willem Duursma was centre stage in a re-imagined dance version of the Disney’s “Tangled”.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow, those same dancing feet could take him all the way to pick one at the AFL National Draft.<\/p>\n

The West Coast Eagles are expected to take Duurdma<\/a>, a dual All-Australian teenage talent, with their number-one pick in tomorrow night’s draft.<\/p>\n

He would not be the first number one from Gippsland \u2014 that honour belongs to Brendan Goddard in 2002.<\/p>\n

He would not even be the first Duursma drafted, with older siblings Xavier, Zane and Yasmin all forging professional AFL careers before him.<\/p>\n

But he will likely be the first top pick to leap from the dance stage to the football field in a matter of days.<\/p>\n

\"Willem<\/p>\n

Willem Duursma is expected to be selected by the West Coast Eagles during the 2025 AFL Draft. (Getty Images: Paul Kane)<\/p>\n

The South Gippsland teenager, like a Disney prince searching for his true love, is letting nothing get the way of achieving his dream. \u00a0<\/p>\n

“I was just determined to do whatever I had to do to try and get to the top level,” Duursma said.Dance makes better footballers<\/p>\n

The Duursma family matriarch, Susan, who owns a dance school in Gippsland, believes football and dance go hand in hand.<\/p>\n

“It helps with his spring and his agility,” she said.<\/p>\n

“We work on a lot of core [strength] in dancing, so he has good core strength \u2014 and that all sort of transfers to sports.”<\/p>\n

AFL draft club by club<\/a><\/p>\n

With the AFL draft just around the corner, see which picks each\u00a0club has to work with and the\u00a0players they could\u00a0select.<\/p>\n

Duursma is a 193-centimetre athlete highly regarded for his ability to play in a variety of positions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Going up against smaller [midfielders] \u2026 I’ve got to still find a way to move. I’ve got a really good sidestep and I think I could probably say that’s a little bit due to dance,” he said.<\/p>\n

Duursma recently starred alongside his father, Dean, in a concert staged by his mother’s school called The Magic Flower.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Since I’ve been about three or four years old, she’s [Duursma’s mother] made all of us kids grow up doing dance,” he told ABC Gippsland Breakfast.<\/p>\n

But life in the Gippsland town of Foster was about more than just the stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“They’ve always been outdoors sort of kids \u2014 playing ball, playing basketball, kicking the footy,” Susan said.<\/p>\n

Built for the spotlight<\/p>\n

Duursma backed up a stellar junior career with repeat All-Australian selection and Vic Country MVP honours at under-18 level, earning an AFL Life Members Scholarship and a place in the National Academy.<\/p>\n

Strong performances for Gippsland Power, Vic Country and the Casey Demons have mirrored the pathway of his brother Zane, who was taken by North Melbourne with pick four in 2023.<\/p>\n

Duursma said he had learned to deal with the pressure of being an elite athlete from a young age.<\/p>\n

He has also learned to embrace the expectation that comes with being a potential number one draft pick.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“That’s the beauty of having all that pressure, is you learn to play well under it,” he said.<\/p>\n

“You get to understand moments a bit more and turn up in big games.”<\/p>\n

With AFL pundits predicting West Coast could use a versatile, smooth-moving, AFL-ready player like Duursma, his mother may need to update the family’s supporter gear \u2014 and look for a new leading man on stage.<\/p>\n

“It’s just a bit tricky when they [my children] play each other, but that’s okay \u2026 I just pop two scarves on,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“What a good problem to have.”<\/p>\n

The AFL draft will be held over two nights on November 19 and 20, and you can follow ABC Sport’s live blog on both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week, Willem Duursma was centre stage in a re-imagined dance version of the Disney’s “Tangled”. Tomorrow, those…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,2444,8841,3263,167919,596,20637,85,7067,14479],"class_list":["post-291841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-ballet","tag-dancing","tag-draft","tag-duursma","tag-football","tag-school","tag-sports","tag-west-coast-eagles","tag-willem-duursma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}