De Young is from Bray Park, Queensland.[1][2][3] He attended Pine Rivers State High School.[4] He moved to Perth, Western Australia in order to be more available to the national team.[4]
De Young is a midfielder.[4] In 2002, he played for the St Andrew's club after not having played for the club in two years. He was the first player from St Andrew's to make Australia's senior national team.[1] In 2010, he played in the final game of the season for his state team in the Australian Hockey League.[5]
He won a gold medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics, Australia's first ever gold medal in men's field hockey at the Olympics.[6][7] His mother, father and two brothers were in Athens to watch him win gold.[7] In recognition of this, de Young was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the 2005 Australia Day Honours.[8]
In 2006, he represented Australia at the Azlan Shah tournament in Malaysia.[9] He competed in the 2007 Champions Trophy competition for Australia.[10]
He won a bronze medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics, playing in every match at the Games for Australia.[4]
New national team coach Ric Charlesworth named him, a returning member, and fourteen total new players who had few than 10 national team caps to the squad before in April 2009 in a bid to ready the team for the 2010 Commonwealth Games.[11] In 2009, he was a member of the national team during a five-game test series in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia against Malaysia.[12] He was a member of the national team in 2010.[5] That year, he was a member of the team that finished first at the Hockey Champions Trophy.[5] In May 2011, he played in the Azlan Shah Cup for Australia. The Cup featured teams from Pakistan, Malaysia, India, South Korea, Britain and New Zealand.[13] In December 2011, he was named as one of twenty-eight players to be on the 2012 Summer OlympicsAustralian men's national training squad. This squad was narrowed in June 2012. He trained with the team from 18 January to mid-March in Perth, Western Australia.[14][15][16] In February during the training camp, he played in a four nations test series with the teams being the Kookaburras, Australia A Squad, the Netherlands and Argentina.[2] He played for the Australian A team in their 3–1 loss to the Kookaburras in the first round of the competition. He scored his team's only goal.[6] He was selected to play for Australia at the 2012 Summer Olympics, where they won the bronze medal.[17]
