Ava Usher
Ava Usher is an Australian rules footballer for the Gold Coast Suns in the AFLW. She was born on 11 August 2007 in Cairns, Queensland, and grew up on the Gold Coast. She is 162 cm tall and plays as a midfielder.
She went to Hillcrest Christian College, where she shone in basketball, swimming and surf lifesaving. In 2019, a friend, Sunny Lappin, encouraged her to try AFL, and together they led Hillcrest to the AFL Queensland Junior State Championship that year. She began playing club football for Burleigh and joined the Gold Coast Suns Academy at age 11.
In 2023, at 15, Usher won the best and fairest at the under-16 national championships for Queensland and was named second best on ground in Bond University’s QAFLW Senior Grand Final, behind her friend Havana Harris. Many scouts believed she could play in the AFLW at 16, but she tore her ACL just before her 2024 bottom-age season.
Despite the injury, she was drafted as an academy selection by the Gold Coast Suns with the seventh pick in the 2025 AFLW national draft, matching a bid from Collingwood.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 00:38 (CET).