In 2014, Salote Sisifa walked into an office with no team, no coach, and no training facilities. She had just left a career reading the news on TV, and now she was tasked with building a national netball program from scratch. Some might call it an empty cupboard. Sisifa called it a chance.

Twelve years later, the Pacific Island nation of Tonga — a country of just 105,000 people spread across more than 170 islands — sits at number eight in the world netball rankings. For comparison, that's just behind Wales and ahead of Scotland and Northern Ireland. Tonga is now launching its very first Commonwealth Games netball campaign, opening against Australia, the sport's dominant powerhouse.

Sisifa promised the national governing body she would resign if she couldn't deliver results within five years. She set an ambitious goal: break into the world's top 10 by 2025. Her head coach, Jaqua Pori-Makea-Simpson, who joined from New Zealand in 2019, thought she was crazy.

"We had no dollar sign to our name," Sisifa told the coach. When she mentioned the top 10 vision, Pori-Makea-Simpson responded: "You're mad. That is obscene."

They recruited players with Tongan heritage from around the world. When star shooter Uneeq Palavi, known as Pav, initially ignored their call, Sisifa brought in a secret weapon — Palavi's own Tongan grandmother, who applied some convincing persuasion. It worked. Tonga won silver at the Pacific Games and jumped from 42nd to 19th in the world.

Then came catastrophe. In early 2022, the underwater Hunga-Tonga Hunga-Ha'apai volcano erupted in what NASA says was one of the most powerful explosions ever recorded by modern instruments — hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. A devastating tsunami followed. Four people died. Communication with the islands was cut off for weeks. Then came a rare two-year-late arrival of Covid-19.

Pori-Makea-Simpson was stranded overseas with no team, no uniforms, and no equipment. She had an upcoming tournament to prepare for and scrambled to find players through social media. Most had never met before they gathered at Sydney Airport just five days before competition.

"I didn't even know their names," she recalled. "They didn't know each other's names. Even when we finished the tournament, I still didn't know everybody's surnames."

They won gold anyway.

Tonga went on to finish eighth at the 2023 World Cup in South Africa. Their team nickname, Tala, means a rare bird that symbolizes hope — fitting for a group that found a way to soar through disaster.

Playing for Tonga, Palavi says, feels like playing alongside 15 sisters. And now, those sisters are ready to take on the world.