USA Eagles Stars Cheta Emba and Emily Henrich Champion Women’s Rugby Growth in South Africa

The final whistle at Loftus Versfeld had barely faded when two of the most accomplished players in American rugby sat down with gsport, days after the USA Eagles’ first ever tour of South Africa ended level at one win apiece. Emily Henrich and Cheta Emba had not stayed on as tourists. They had stayed on as leaders.

Both are serving as Sports Envoys, athletes appointed through a United States government programme that sends professional sportspeople across borders to build connection through sport, and their week in Johannesburg is built around clinics, community visits and conversations with the next generation. It is leadership beyond the touchline, and it frames everything the pair had to say when gsport sat down with them on Monday.

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The rugby itself gave them plenty to work with. The Springbok Women claimed the first Test 34-21 at Ellis Park before the Eagles levelled the series with a 26-19 win at Loftus Versfeld, and for Emba, a veteran of three Rugby World Cups and an Olympic podium, the meaning ran deeper than the scoreboard. She pointed to the overlap between the sevens and fifteens programmes on both sides as proof that player development pathways are maturing, and to a contest that sent everyone home with a few wins and plenty to work on.

“I think the rise in women’s rugby globally is very clear and obvious and the Springbok Women are a perfect example of that.”

USA Eagles Player, Cheta Emba

For Henrich, the tour asked a harder question. Named in the squad off the back of a stellar season in England, she was ruled out by a hand injury before the first Test and had to discover what leadership looks like when the boots stay in the bag. 

She found it in service, working closely with teammates preparing to wear the 13 jersey for the first time against a Springbok Women side expert at moving the ball to width.

“Seeing Ellis Park and watching the girls run out for that match, it really just gave me goosebumps.”

USA Eagles Player, Emily Henrich

Emba watched the same young squad share a series with a top ten side away from home and declared the Eagles’ future bright, crediting a hunger to compete, a distinctly American flavour of rugby and a culture of connection being carried into a new generation under head coach Jack Hanratty.

Henrich brings her own evidence of that upward trajectory. Named Leicester Tigers Player of the Season for the 2025-26 Premiership Women’s Rugby campaign, she shares a dressing room with Springbok Women hooker Micke Gunter, and the education has gone well beyond rugby.

“Micke introduced me to rusks, which I’ve been enjoying while I’ve been down here,” said Henrich.

Gunter’s stories about the cultures represented in the South African team resonated deeply with a player who has always seen rugby as a space that brings diverse people together. But Henrich’s sharpest observation was strategic. 

The USA and South Africa both live in that eight to ten band of the world rankings, and she believes weekly exposure to the world’s best in the PWR is exactly how sides in that corridor learn to compete with the top four nations, to find the tryline and to defend their own.

Her authority on perseverance is hard won. An ACL tear in June 2022 cost her that year’s Rugby World Cup after five years of building towards it, a blow that felt like the end of the world at the time. Instead it sent her to Leicester to own her craft, and it made her place at the 2025 tournament in England all the sweeter.

“If you dedicate yourself to your recovery and your rehab, in the same way you dedicate yourself to your rugby training, you’ll come back stronger,” said Henrich.

Emba’s career is the perfect counterweight. Vice captain at the 2017 Rugby World Cup, part of the USA’s first HSBC Sevens Series gold medal, their highest world ranking in 2023 and the historic Olympic bronze at the Paris 2024 Games, she is quick to insist the medal was the product of two cycles of momentum rather than a single miracle. 

And she sees no separation between the laboratory and the pitch. The Harvard Molecular and Cellular Biology graduate, who once worked on prosthetics development for combat amputees, approaches rugby with a scientist’s fascination for systems working in tandem.

“It’s been really fun to understand that what happens off the pitch and on the pitch actually are one and the same.”

Cheta Emba

Their journeys into rugby could not be more different, and that is precisely the point. Henrich was playing flag rugby at six with the Niagara Wasps, the daughter of two rugby players, watching her mother’s teammates and learning from the sideline that strong, brave women belong on a rugby field. 

She was a national champion aerial skier at fourteen before rugby won out. Emba only discovered the game at 20, at university, and rose to the very top of it anyway. Between them they prove there is no single correct starting line for a girl in sport.

Both have added coaching to their leadership toolkit. Henrich served as assistant coach at Dartmouth during her recovery and learnt to break the game down for players who never had her head start. Emba coaches at Harvard, where she has learnt to empathise with the pressures of management while never forgetting the view from inside the playing group.

That view now carries formal weight. Elected to the USA Rugby Players’ Association and International Rugby Players’ Association Executive Board in 2022, Emba represents national team athletes on governance matters, and her charge to South African players is to practise being brave, build consensus among teammates and back the representatives who speak for them.

“I think the players’ voice matters because they’re the ones experiencing it, you know, on the ground, day in and day out.”

Cheta Emba 

The envoy work began on the morning of this interview, with coaching sessions for two university sides. Henrich described a day of asking players where they come from and what brought them to rugby, sharing their own experiences in return, and recognising that American and South African players are fighting the same fight for investment and belief. The colour of the tour has not been lost on them either, with Emba, whose previous South African visits centred on Cape Town, savouring her first taste of Joburg.

“The Stellenbosch Academy of Sport was nice enough to put on a braai for us on our final night. And all of us have been enjoying the biltong in between our sessions. Good source of protein, so our nutritionist is happy.”

Emily Henrich

At the heart of it all is the question Emba puts to every young player she meets, the one she hopes sends each girl away with a little more self-belief.

“The question I like to always ask the players is, why not us? Why not you?” said Emba.

The horizon both women are building towards is the 2033 Rugby World Cup on home soil. Henrich’s blueprint is access, finding the future stars around the world who have not yet touched a rugby ball and putting role models on their screens, while Emba points to the sponsorship and partnership lessons South Africa is already teaching the global game.

“I think it takes getting a rugby ball in young girls’ hands and women’s rugby on their televisions,” said Henrich.

If their first day of clinics in Johannesburg is anything to go by, the recruitment of the next generation’s leaders has already begun, one session at a time.

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“The Eagles Sport Envoy Program is a week-long program in Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban, with U.S. Women’s Eagles players, Cheta Emba and Emily Henrich. The program is a part of the Mission’s Freedom250 activities, celebrating the U.S.’ anniversary by highlighting the impact of sports in shaping U.S. culture and influence. With the U.S. women’s rugby being a leading global player, the program aims to provide a platform for skills development and international exposure for young women athletes. During the program, the envoys lead rugby skills clinics, coaching workshops, and career-focused discussions for women rugby players ages 16-24. Sports has played a pivotal role in U.S. identity and has been a longstanding connecting factor of the U.S. and South Africa. The program celebrates this and uses women’s rugby as a vehicle to foster connection and mutual understanding.” – U.S. Embassy

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Main Photo Caption: USA Eagles stars Emily Henrich and Cheta Emba are in South Africa as Sports Envoys, leading coaching clinics and community engagements in Johannesburg following the drawn two-Test series against the Springbok Women. All Photos: Supplied

Photo 2 Caption: Cheta Emba won a historic Olympic bronze medal with the USA Sevens at the Paris 2024 Games.

Photo 3 Caption: Emily Henrich was named Leicester Tigers Player of the Season for the 2025-26 Premiership Women’s Rugby campaign

Photo 4 Caption: The USA Eagles won the final Test, to share the historic two-Test series with the Springbok Women, at one win apiece. Photo: Deon van der Merwe / USA Rugby