The US Eagles exited the World Cup on Saturday after beating Samoa 60-0 in York but seeing Australia hold England to 47-7 in Brighton, enough for the Wallaroos to reach the quarter-finals on points differential.

Kate Zackary’s team will be disappointed to miss a last-eight date with Canada, knowing they might well have made it had a few things gone differently.

In the first game, in front of nearly 43,000 fans in Sunderland on a historic night for women’s rugby, England might have been held to less than 69-7. In the second and third games, better goal-kicking would have helped. But for five missed conversions, Samoa would have been beaten 70-0. As it turned out, that still would not have been enough, but missed kicks also cost the US victory against Australia in round two, a 31-31 tie that will go down as a World Cup classic but also a missed chance for a historic American win.

After the Samoa game Zackary, the USA captain, said: “We put our whole hearts on the line and that’s all I can ask for. So wherever the chips fall, they’ll fall how they will, and we’ll just pick up the pieces.”

It was true that the Eagles put it all on the line – their own line, in Zackary’s case, the Ealing Trailfinders flanker pulling off a fine last-ditch tackle to deny Samoa what would have been an immensely popular, and thoroughly deserved, first try of the tournament.

The Eagles’ coach, Sione Fukofuka, said after the Samoa game: “We rise and fall as a team, so we’ll watch [England v Australia] together, and obviously, first time ever, I think, cheering on the English team and hoping for the best.”

The best didn’t materialize but Fukofuka’s post-tournament review should include glowing words for a number of younger players who should be around for the next World Cup, in Australia four years from now.

Chief among them is Freda Tafuna, a phenomenally pacey and powerful flanker who is not only just 22 but is still a student, at Lindenwood in Missouri. College player of the year two years running, she now has six World Cup tries – two against Australia, four against Samoa – and two player-of-the-match awards.

“All glory to God,” Tafuna said on Saturday. “Shout out to the girls, my family and my friends back home, and just thank you to the crowd. You guys are the best.”

Before the game, the Guardian spoke to Erica Jarrell-Searcy, the dynamic Eagles lock who ended up scoring a try in each World Cup game – a stunning sprint from 40 meters against England, a short-range plunge against Australia, a 20m run-in against Samoa – to emerge as a tournament star.

“Freda’s a mutant,” Jarrell-Searcy laughed, reaching for a term of highest-possible praise among rugby forwards everywhere. “Oh, she’s so cool.”

After graduation, it would appear likely Tafuna will follow Jarrell-Searcy to England, where the lock plays for Sale Sharks. Herself not long out of Harvard – like the scrum-half Cass Bargell, another to shine in England – Jarrell-Searcy sees college as a source of future strength.

“The college game is some of the best-resourced rugby you can play as a young American athlete,” she said. “I don’t think you could possibly overstate the role of the college game as a feeder for American rugby right now, and then with Women’s Elite Rugby [the new semi-professional domestic league] hopefully taking root, it’s all growing.

“I think the future of this group, and the next cycle especially, is very bright. Watching Harvard every weekend, I never would have played on the team they’ve got now. The girls they can recruit, on their first day of college they are better than some senior players now. I mean, just look at Sariah Ibarra.”

From Southern California, partly shaped in New Zealand, the full-back in fact bypassed the college game to sign a contract with USA Sevens, to chase Olympic gold.

“She’s 19, tearing it up,” Jarrell-Searcy said, of Ibarra’s excursion into 15s. “The second we saw her in camp, we knew she was special, and she’s part of a generation that are all special. So yeah, it’s going to be a really cool couple years.”

It will be a less cool couple of days for the Eagles, as they pack and prepare to fly home. But there was consolation in full view immediately after the game on Saturday, as the Americans and Samoans gathered on the field to embrace, laugh, dance and sing – a hymn, led by the Samoans, addressed in gratitude to a grateful crowd.

Such expressions of sheer joy in rugby and its traditions have been a prominent part of this World Cup, opponents showing delight in each other, in challenges posed and met, in hard play in front of unprecedented crowds and media attention for a game built on respect and support.

“Joy has been a big theme for us,” Jarrell-Searcy said, of an Eagles squad containing Ilona Maher, the exuberant social media superstar whose credo – “Beast, Beauty, Brains” – has been on full display.

Jarrell-Searcy continued: “Charles Dudley, our strength and conditioning coach, he has this graph where it’s kind of for him to tell us how much the week is gonna suck. We got to this week, it was the peak of the peak on the graph.

“We’re, like, dipping into this red zone where you might start to pick up little injuries, because we’re working so hard. We know that, and we’re prepared for that, but … I think also we were sort of like synced-up in our menstrual cycles in a way that was not helpful to also be at the peak of the peak.

“So there’s tears and frustration, and just like the absolute pits. And I sat with Mel Bosman, our forwards coach, at breakfast, and I pulled up this picture … when we were at a captain’s run making a TikTok with Lo [Maher] and the photographers were there, and they took a picture of us, like, huddling around Lo’s phone. And we’re tight, and we’re leaning in and we’re grinning, just trying to figure out how to get this TikTok done right.

“And I was like, ‘Imagine if this huddle wasn’t about, you know, a silly, inconsequential TikTok. Imagine if that was a high-performance huddle, and we’re focusing on, you know, a dropped ball, a play that didn’t go right, and we’re gonna get it right, and we’re excited about getting it right, we’re not frustrated about getting it wrong.

“And Mel was like, ‘That’s so important.’ You know, obviously from her experience with the [New Zealand] Black Ferns, she knows about that sisterhood and how motivating it can be to express yourself and not necessarily be constantly trying to avoid failure, but actually seeking success. And we’ve brought joy, ever since then.

“Our end-of-the-week units training has been, anybody who’s not in, because we have injuries here and there, dragging a speaker up and down the line-out, whatever disruptive music they can, like, absolute not-safe-for-work music. We had pool noodles one time, we were throwing tackle pads in the air. Would you believe some of our best attack and line-out drill has come out of those joyful experiences?

“So yeah, joy, and especially feminine joy, I think it’s a non-zero part of this World Cup – as an athlete and as a fan.”