TOUGH midfielder Carys D'Addario has gone through more injury tribulations than most players her age.

Named Western Australia's MVP at the U18 national championships, she has shot up the draft rankings on the back of a rare, fully fit season, having overcome a fractured ankle and a broken hip in the past few years.

D'Addario (pronounced da-DAH-rio) had a straightforward run from Auskick until year nine while playing with the boys at Caversham (in Perth's north-east), and then crossed to Swan Districts for women's football.

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"When I was 16, I got shepherded off the ball playing League (WAFLW), and twisted my ankle somehow. We didn't think it was that bad, I was walking around on it for a few weeks, but we finally got an MRI," D'Addario told AFL.com.au.

"I did all my ligaments, and there was a fracture in the joint. It ruled me out of all the under-16 champs and training with the 18s as an underager.

"Then last year, I had most of my WAFLW season, but just before finals and the under-18 champs, I broke my hip in a tackle. It was frustrating, it was the worst timing."

While she escaped surgery for the hip injury, D'Addario wasn't able to run for three months.

"It wasn't displaced. But the type of fracture I had, you don't normally see it in footballers, you kind of see it in car accidents, or if you're old and have a fall. It was hard to rehab, because no one had seen it before (in a football context), so I had to sit and wait, literally, till I felt okay to do something," D'Addario said.

"Luckily enough, one day I woke up and it was just, no pain. Before that, I was on crutches for a few weeks, and I did a bit of swimming, but running was the big thing I couldn't do for a long time. 

"It was my last year of school, I couldn't do the aths carnival and all the fun things, but it made me focus more on my schoolwork."

Such was D'Addario's form in the first half of the year, she got the call-up to play in the All-Stars team against the Marsh AFLW Academy.

"It was really satisfying, because I felt like I'd missed out on so much, and finally got a chance to put myself out there," she said.

"The goal this year was to get some continuity and play out the season, and once I got a couple of games under my belt, it was 'Let's really dig in here'.

"I was happy to go away at the national championships and show my talents, and I felt like I had a consistent season as well. I want my teammates to know what they're going to get from me every game."

Having graduated, D'Addario has started a pharmacy degree, with the plan to go part-time once drafted, while she coaches football and basketball at her former high school.

The West Coast supporter watches footy closely, looking up to various attributes of players to model her own game – Georgie Prespakis' cleanliness, Charlie Rowbottom's strength and Scott Pendlebury's smarts.

In her previous sporting life, she was an all-rounder playing cricket at state level, but her "heart was always in footy". 

"Even when I was really young, playing Auskick with the boys, that last year of Auskick was when they announced AFLW. I always knew, even before then, that I wanted to play AFL and be the first girl to play AFL (men's)," she said.

"But it was reassuring that there was an actual pathway to get into, no one questions playing, and everyone's for it, whether it's footy, cricket or soccer."