Sophia Hartley

speaker

87 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 23 Jul

Sophia Hartley’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Told by the people at the heart of the journey, this is the spirit of Tala, the rapid rise of Tonga's netball team.

Salote Sassifa took on the role as CEO in 2014.

Before that, her career had taken a very different path.

Salote will be familiar to most Tongans as the nation's TV news anchor.

So how does she go from reading the 10 o'clock news to managing elite performance sport?

But it wasn't long before Salote realised this job would be far more than a career break.

Salote went to the Tongan Netball Association, the national governing body for netball in Tonga, and said, Please give me five years.

And sure enough, it did.

We'll get back to that in a bit.

The board backs Eloti's vision and she got to work with making it a reality.

But how does someone with no previous experience go about building a national netball team from scratch?

Who would be brave enough to take on such a challenge?

Salote contacted eight coaches.

Seven didn't even bother to reply.

What was it about Salote's email then that left Jaqua wanting to know more?

Here's Tongan's netball CEO, Salote Safista, again.

With a head coach in place, Tongan's netball team was taking the first steps towards professionalism.

However, not everyone was supportive.

Some people argued that Tongan netball shouldn't open up opportunities to the Tongan diaspora.

That's athletes with Tongan heritage living in different countries.

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