Adrole, a Year 13 student at Whanganui Collegiate, plays goalshoot.
Her recruitment for the team began about two years ago when a member of the Fijian national team’s board approached her parents at a netball tournament in Wellington, Adrole said.
They asked her parents if she would be interested in playing for Fiji.
Adrole is New Zealand-born and raised with a Fijian father and Samoan mother, making her eligible for the Fiji Pearls under World Netball eligibility criteria.
“I just woke up one morning and my dad told me that I’d been selected for the squad,” she said.
She is the second member of her family to make a national netball squad.
Her older sister Kara Adrole, 23, plays for Samoa’s women’s netball team, Samoa Tifaimoana.
“[Netball] is something that we really bond over,” Adrole said.
As Adrole becomes old enough to be eligible for club teams, she hopes to play alongside or against her sister one day.
Her sister played for the Manawa Netball team last season.
“It’s really special to me because I look up to my older sister quite a bit in the netball.”
The sisters were named in the 2026 Preliminary Manawa Training Squad.
They are invited to try out for a place on next season’s team.
Adrole has been playing netball for about seven years.
She first tried the sport in Year 6 and said, although she loved netball now, it was not love at first sight.
“I didn’t like it at first because I didn’t really understand the game.”
As the game began to click around Year 8, so did her passion for it.
“I love just [that] it’s just such a fun game,” she said.
“I’ve met so many girls that I consider my best friends now that don’t even live in my town.”
Adrole is also a keen rower, competing for Whanganui Collegiate.
She and her team placed second in the girls under-18 coxed four and fourth in the girls under-18 coxed eight at the Auckland Junior Regatta on February 14.
Erin Smith is a multimedia journalist based in Whanganui.
