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.
