Passing the Torch is a new spin-off podcast series under the Credit to the Girls umbrella. It profiles the young players of the AFL Women's competition who will be at the forefront of the league over the next 10 years. Episodes can be listened to via the traditional Credit to the Girls feed, wherever you get your podcasts.
BELLA Lewis won West Coast's best and fairest in her first season of AFLW.
But the 2021 victory felt somewhat hollow for the then-19-year-old, and affected how she handled the first season of 2022.
"I don't like to use the word 'luck', we don't like to use it, but there were a lot of girls injured, 'Swanny' (Emma Swanson) was suspended for a couple of games and I think that gave me a chance to be thrown in the deep end," Lewis said.
"I had to step up in my first year, which now I'm very, very grateful for. That was the result of it, but I think winning a few more games would have been a better result.
"It did a couple of things. Positively, you want to be the best of the best in terms of the draft, and I think initially when you're getting drafted and you're going through the state process and the national academy process, that's in your mind.
"I realised I wasn't satisfied whatsoever with it, I didn't feel anything, there was no 'Cool, I got this award'. It was more like 'Awesome, I won, but who cares, because we won one or two games'.
"I think going into the second year, it did that positively, but negatively, I struggled a lot with pressure."
Lewis said while she loved being on the road for a month while the Western Australia border was shut at the start of 2022, the "second-year blues" hit hard on the field.
"I thought I'd been in the system a year and maybe I had stuff figured out, and that was not at all the case," she said.
"I think it was good for me to go through something like that, it gave me a lot of learnings and perspective from the top of winning an award like that and thinking you've got things figured out like that.
"On field, I wasn't as fit as I was the year before, and my main goal in my first off-season had been to get really strong and bigger, because the girls I was going up against were crazy strong. I thought if I can't get taller, I can get stronger and I'm close to the ground, so hopefully that helps with contested ball.
"After that, you get a lot of people expecting you're going to get better, going into your second year, and living up to in-club expectation of that, it makes you not want to let the girls and your coaches down.
"I think for me, I struggled with that quite a bit, instead of just doing, and playing, and doing what I know I can, instead of re-wiring my whole thinking process behind it. Being so young as well, you still don't know how to prep, you're figuring those things out."
EPISODE GUIDE
1:47 – Starting footy while growing up in Sydney
3.45 – Gymnastics and trampolining background
8.48 – Being a top draftee for West Coast
12.30 – Debut season played mostly behind a closed border
16.15 – Winning a best and fairest in a debut season
20.57 – Moving beyond second-year blues
25.07 – West Coast's minimal list turnover in 2023
28.18 – Leadership with Bella Lewis
