Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, A five-match winning streak has carried Sale and Erica Jarrell-Searcy into the PWR play-off spots
ByMike HensonBBC Sport rugby union news reporter- Published34 minutes ago
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"ARE YOU A BADASS?"
It was the subject line that changed Erica Jarrell-Searcy's life.
The email had landed in her inbox in her first few weeks at Harvard.
Jarrell-Searcy was already many things.
She was fiercely academic. Studying molecular biology at one of the world's most prestigious universities, she was following in a family tradition.
Jarrell-Searcy's parents met over a test-tube centrifuge in a laboratory. Her grandfather - Dudley Herschbach – won a Nobel Prize in chemistry.
But her upbringing was not just among books.
"My childhood was just sort of curious I guess," Jarrell-Searcy says.
"The main trait my parents instilled in us was having a deep sense of exploration for things.
"And that ended up being very physical."
By the age of 10, helped by a precisely plotted parental diary, Jarrell-Searcy had tried gymnastics, baseball, soccer, basketball and swimming.
Equestrian, which she started aged three, was her main activity though. At the end of a high-school day, she would travel an hour to the riding stable, practise from 8pm to 10pm, return home, do her homework, grab some sleep and start again.
It paid off. Aged 17, she won team gold at the junior national championships. On one occasion, a horse flipped, fell on Jarrell-Searcy and both rider and mount bounced up uninjured.
In short, Jarrell-Searcy was a bit of a badass.
So, on seeing the subject line, she opened the email.
"At that point, I thought rugby was a weird European word for soccer, right?" she says.
"You know how you guys call soccer, football? I thought maybe some people call it football, some people call it rugby."
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She was soon put right. In one of Harvard's lecture theatres, the women's rugby captain Maya Learned put on a video of a United States' match.
"They were running at each other, hitting each other, full tackle professional paid athletes," says Jarrell-Searcy.
"And I was like 'whoa, that looks awesome'.
"My brother was a wrestler. Growing up, I loved to wrestle, but girls weren't allowed to do that - it was a very vindicating experience as a little tomboy athlete.
"Our first practice started by just getting the new recruits to run at a tackle pad and seeing how we reacted.
"My team-mates still make fun of me now because I was just grinning, getting a full run up, and sprinting at this stationary girl holding a pad.
"After that, it was it was rugby or bust."
Which was fine when Jarrell-Searcy was at Harvard.
Harvard had a dedicated rugby pitch, a state-of-the-art weights room, indoor facilities and a slate of fixtures against other college sides.
Title IX – a landmark piece of legislation – stipulates that all educational institutions in the United States spend equal amounts on women's sports provision as they do on men's.
However when she graduated, the reality of life outside the college bubble bit hard.
Jarrell-Searcy would go to a public gym before 5am, work a 12-hour ambulance shift transporting non-emergency patients to hospital, before travelling to training at night under shonky floodlights.
On her days off, she would find parks and tracks to do solo speed work. At the weekends, she would gather with the few national-standard players in her state and do some contact work at a mutually inconvenient central location.
"It was almost impossible," she says. "If I wasn't obsessed, I would have just been like, 'alright, time to grow up, let's get a real job'.
"That is what it is like to be a developing player in the USA, it is total bootstrap stuff."
It is that reality which has made the PWR – the biggest domestic women's rugby league anywhere – a magnet for talented players around the world.
As soon as Jarrell-Searcy left Harvard, it was her aim. In January 2024, just before her 25th birthday, she made it, signing for Sale Sharks.
"I remember coming to Carrington [Sale's training base] and just hearing them say 'we are on pitch four' which meant there were four pitches," she says.
"Just little things like that, people here don't even think about."
The change was big, and the curve was steep.
"I was watching these girls smashing each other into the mud on and thinking I'm a United States international but I'm not actually as good as the average person here," she says.
"In my first season, it was very much like trial by fire. In my first game involvements, I was just getting smoked. I think I lost the ball in contact every other time I carried.
"But just being in a practice squad with Holly Aitchison, Courtney Knight, Morwenna Talling, Amy Cokayne, - I could list the entire team - it is iron-on-iron stuff."
At the Women's Rugby World Cup in August, England were cut apart by those sharpened skills.
From just inside the opposition half, Jarrell-Searcy shrugged off Jess Breach and scorched in for the Eagles' only try of the tournament opener.
Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Jarrell-Searcy celebrates scoring the United States' try in their 69-7 defeat by Engalnd in the Women's Rugby World Cup opener
"It was fun getting to open up," she remembers.
"Pace is something in my back pocket. It was pure fun."
Ilona Maher, the United States outside centre and rugby's social media phenomenon with 10m followers, was first to congratulate Jarrell-Searcy as she slid over.
Maher's online clout, combined with an Olympic bronze for the USA women's team at Paris 2024 and the 2025 Rugby World Cup, has turbo-charged the women's game stateside.
"It's on a very fast upshoot," says Jarrell.
"'Lo' brings in thousands and thousands of fans who have never seen rugby.
"There is so much positive energy. You meet people who have driven seven hours to be there like it is a One Direction concert."
Jarrell-Searcy's next gig is away at the 62,000-seater Tottenham Stadium, where Sale are taking on Saracens as the PWR half of the Showdown fixture, which also sees Saracens taking on Northampton in the Prem.
After playing in front of a 10,000-plus crowd – a record for a stand-alone women's game in the United States – last May and scoring against England before 42,723 fans at the Stadium of Light in August, Jarrell-Searcy has got a taste for the big stage.
"I didn't know how much I liked a crowd until this summer, and then we all met a brand-new version of me," she said.
Brand new. But still badass.
