Rugby union has always been Tess Feury’s escape from dealing with life and death.
Leicester Tigers’ United States international full-back has juggled her playing career with nursing.
The 27-year-old’s first season in England’s Premiership Women’s Rugby competition is also the first time she has been able to devote her attention to the game.
Three and a half years ago, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, it was the complete opposite when working on an intensive care ward back home in New Jersey.
Rugby, like all sporting competitions, had been halted.
‘Rugby is my escape’
But her ambition of featuring at the 2021 World Cup, in the sport she has played since the age of four, was a way to distract herself from the daily frontline battle she was helping fight during the global healthcare crisis.
“When there was no rugby during Covid , nursing became really difficult,” Feury told BBC Radio Leicester.
“We were working unbelievably long shifts and extra drays, then you would get a call from your manager saying we need all these extra nurses and, while it would be your sixth or seventh day in a row, how could you say no when people needed help?
“Rugby is my escape when nursing gets hard. And on those really hard days I just wanted to go pass a rugby ball around with my friends.
“When the rugby season was essentially cancelled during that, it was difficult. But I had my eyes set on the World Cup.
“So I said no matter how long my shift was, I needed to come home and I needed to get my training in, because I wanted to make that World Cup team.”
‘Covid changed me’
Rugby union and nursing have always been family affairs for Feury.
She grew up wanting to emulate her mother, KJ, as a nurse. Feury graduated from Penn State in 2018, and went on to work as a paediatric nurse in New Jersey, where her mother worked.
During the pandemic, Feury got early experience dealing with the outbreak of Covid as children fell ill. She was quickly moved on to work with adult patients.
Feury and her mother would find themselves working alternate shifts. Time spent together then was fleeting.
“I grew up watching her and knew I wanted to go into that profession,” Feury said.
“Covid definitely changed me. I think that I always knew I wanted to be a nurse and was passionate about it, but it took that world wide pandemic for me to realise the tangible impact I can have on patients and their families.
“These were patients who were alone most of the the time. They couldn’t see family, have visitors, no-one, so you really saw the raw side of human connection.
“Working through Covid made me realise how much rugby is my escape and how much it truly is my happy place.”
Training in the ‘Feury House of Pain’
Just as her mother inspired Feury to pursue nursing, it was her father, Tom, who got her into rugby.
Locally, he has been instrumental in the game’s development, setting up a junior programme at their local club in Morris before going on to coach the high school girls’ team.
Her two older brothers, Blaze and Jake, are also players.
At their childhood home, they have a gym set up in the basement called ‘Feury House of Pain’.
It was there, and in the back yard – when restrictions on training and playing were in place – that she went to work on making her World Cup dream a reality.
And the overtime she put in paid off.
She helped the US reach the quarter-finals of the tournament, which was delayed by a year because of the pandemic.
“That hard work came to the surface when I made the 2021 World Cup team,” she said.
“It made the dark days nursing and those long shifts and runs after shift all worth it.”
But Feury has not stopped there.
Her move across the Atlantic to join one of England’s most recognisable clubs, Leicester Tigers, in their first season of top-flight rugby is testament to that.
“Pretty much after Covid I put my head down and said ‘now is the time to say yes to life’,” she told BBC East Midlands Today.
“That is my dad’s favourite quote and I feel like I’ve taken that in full swing and have started saying yes to all opportunities, whether that is playing overseas or taking on a new job.
“I think good things happen when you let them and say yes.”
Interviews conducted by BBC Radio Leicester’s Adam Whitty and BBC East Midlands Today’s Angela Rafferty.
