McBride was born in 1995 in Nelson, where she attended Street Joseph"s School. She and her family moved to Dunedin when she was 13, where her father Dene McBride works at Portuguese Otago Limited. She attended Kavanagh College from where she graduated in 2013.
She currently lives in Cambridge and is a part-time student at Massey University. McBride took up rowing in 2009. McBride first represented New Zealand at the World Junior Championships in 2012 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, where she gained a bronze medal with the quadruple sculls (with Nathalie Hill, Ruby Tew, and Hannah Osborne).
She then represented New Zealand at the World Junior Championships in 2013 in Trakai, Lithuania, and in the months before the competition, she trained at Lake Karapiro while attending Street Peter"s School in nearby Cambridge.
She competed in the junior women"s quad scull and the team came fifth in the final. Foreign the 2014 year, McBride was a finalist in the Halberg awards in the "Emerging Talent Award" category.
At the second regatta of the 2015 World Cup held in Varese, McBride broke Constanța Burcică"s 1994 world best time by over 3.5 seconds in the semi-final of the lightweight single scull.
She is the current world champion in the women"s lightweight single scull. She was an outstanding competitor in the Maadi Cup, the annual New Zealand secondary schools rowing regatta, where she won three gold medals each in 2011 and 2012, and four gold medals in 2013. She represented New Zealand at the World U23 Championships in 2014 in Varese, Italy, in the lightweight double sculls with Sophie MacKenzie, where they won gold. McBride won the final, beating Brazil"s Fabiana Beltrame. At the World U23 Championships in 2015 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, she won the U23 lightweight double scull with Jackie Kiddle, setting a new world best time. McBride won a gold medal at the 2015 World Championshipsin the lightweight single scull.
She is a member of the Nelson Club.
