The ex-aerial skier turned Tigers star-spangled recruit

Emily Henrich made her international debut for the United States in 2018

What do you get when an aerial skier walks into a rugby training session?

Answer: Emily Henrich - a hard-running versatile Leicester Tigers back who discovered the thrills of gravity-defying flips and twists could also be found on the terra firma of a rugby pitch.

Growing up in Buffalo, New York, Henrich's first serious sporting passion involved heading down snowy slopes at high speeds to launch herself into a series of tricks to impress judges.

And it was only a shortage of players at a rugby union training session being taken by her mother that changed the trajectory of where the American later landed as a sportsperson.

"I think it's a certain type of person who comes to these kind of sports," Henrich told BBC Radio Leicester.

"You are wired in a certain way that you are really seeking to be the best, but also not afraid to get your hands dirty."

Henrich may have been an aerial skier first - excelling so much that she was nationally ranked and won an Eastern Championships title when she was 14 years old - but she was raised on rugby union.

Both her mother and father, Lisa and Chris, had played and she first picked up the ball as a child.

"It was always kind of there growing up around the sport," Henrich said of her interest in rugby union.

"It was a sport I enjoyed being a part of and there was such a community my parents had fostered, so I knew I would always come back to it."

Emily Henrich says there was "a lot of flipping" when it came to being a aerial skier

Her early experience of rugby union proved to be the ideal grounding for a career in which Henrich has gone from being roped into the Orchard High School team coached by her mum, to becoming a High School All-American before going on to play for Dartmouth College, the United States national team and now English top-flight women's side Tigers.

The 24-year-old is among Leicester's summer arrivals before their second season in the Women's Premiership - which starts against title holders Gloucester-Hartpury on Sunday.

"In middle school I was playing tackle football, American football, and my mum started coaching the high school team in my town and she offered to bring me out to some practices because they were low on numbers, low for bodies, and she thought I could hold my own in some of the contact drills," Henrich said.

"I had a base line from when I was playing as a child, so I went and found I could outcompete girls at the breakdown and in tackles, so I started playing that year when I was 13 years old on the high school team and just stuck with it."

And so, tackles and mauls went on to replace the more extreme-sounding triple-twisting double-somersaults of the freestyle ski world.

Not that Henrich still does not enjoy the same sense of exhilaration.

"You're still chasing that sort of adrenaline high," she said. "A jump in skiing, that feeling you get, is pretty similar to when you score a try in rugby or make a big play or make that big hit."