On the road back
Juhász has felt the support as she works toward a return
STORRS — Most everything about Dorka Juhász’s first season at UConn was a careful exploration, an elaborate process, a drawnout acclimation of ups and downs until she was out — out abruptly, out for good.
“I remember the sequence very clearly,” Juhász said.
Which is to say she remembers the fear and confusion and disappointment and pain, all the physical and emotional stress packed into an instant on March 28, when her cries of pain rang through an otherwise silent Total Mortgage Arena.
It was approaching 8 p.m. in Bridgeport and 2 a.m. in Pecs, Hungary, where her mother was watching online. The Huskies were playing NC State in an Elite Eight game that ultimately became a double-overtime classic but was first marked by Juhász’s gruesome left wrist injury.
“Just getting the rebound, I got pushed a little bit and, reflex, I put it down,” she said of bracing herself. “I fell and something was weird.”
Teammate Evina Westbrook rushed over.
“She looked at me, holding my head, and she said, ‘Don’t look,’ ” Juhász said. “That’s when I looked, and I started freaking out. It wasn’t pain. I think I was in shock. It didn’t look like a real wrist. And E, she was just holding me. They were all holding me, and then I started to feel pain.”
Perhaps you’ve seen the replay.
Juhász has not.
“I never will,” she said. Her mangled wrist was partially repaired backstage, after she walked away from the court in tears and in the arms of staff members. An MRI was performed. The dislocation was reset. Her arm was placed in a cast. Early options for surgery to repair a bone fracture were discussed.
Juhász grabbed her phone, seeing texts and missed calls from her mother, Hajnalka Balázs, a
decorated Hungarian basketball player. Doctors suggested she call home and she did, assuring her mother that she was fine. Or that she was going to be. Dorka decided it was best for her father, Zsolt Juhász, a pediatric surgeon working a night shift at the time, not to be told until the next day.
“Seeing Dorka get injured and not being able to physically comfort her and hug her was the hardest part, for sure,” Zsolt Juhász said in an email.
This was all so surreal. This is what the seasonlong journey produced. A finish line she never saw in the distance.
A cold happenstance of sports breaking something, literally and figuratively. For the first time, she referred to UConn team members as “they” and “them” instead of “we” and “us.”
“I was just sitting there like, ‘My season ended,’ ” Juhász said. “I started to process it. I was really hoping they can go to the Final Four, but I know I am not going. I’m not going to play.”
There were three immediate options. Juhász could go to the hospital for treatment and pain mitigation, return to her apartment in Storrs or join the team on the bench.
She chose the bench, watching Paige Bueckers carry the Huskies through a thrilling 91-87 victory. UConn’s 14th consecutive Final Four appearance was secured, the usual destination the culmination for a most unusual season defined by so many significant injuries.
Juhász’s was the last. It ended her dream of playing on the sport’s biggest stage. She underwent surgery on March 30, the day teammates and coaches traveled to Minneapolis, where she would join them to watch from the bench later in the week, celebrating a semifinal victory over Stanford, lamenting an inability to help as the Huskies were overwhelmed inside during a championship game loss to South Carolina.
“It was crazy because I literally was just playing and now I’m right here and
I have to get surgery,” she said, continually snapping her fingers. “I was just playing and now my season is over and I’m taking painkillers and flying.”
SUPPORT FROM CT AND BEYOND
There’s mail for you, someone said to Juhász in passing at the Werth Champions Center, sometime after the season ended.
Was there ever. And it kept coming in. “Hundreds,” Juhász said. She posted a photograph recently to Instagram, seated on a practice court, back to a stanchion, envelopes surrounding her like the confetti had in late March when the Huskies made her the center of their Bridgeport Regional victory celebration.
Now a community was reaching out, or communities. The Connecticut community. The Hungarian community.
“I read every one,” Juhász said. “Some people were like, ‘My name is Juhász. Are we related? Maybe second generation?’ There are a lot of immigrants from Hungary and their grandchild would reach out to me. I learned a lot. Someone had printed out a story about their grandmother and how they got here.”
She cherished these letters.
“It actually helped me a lot, especially on the bad days,” Juhász said. “There were days when my hand was not moving but I could read those, one by one. ‘You’re my favorite player.’ Or, ‘I wish you the best.’ Some people even wrote really long letters about why they like me. I don’t know that person, but the way they talk to me it feels like a huge support system.”
These correspondences made Juhász feel even more part of something that she is still getting used to. Her UConn experience is one year old and halfway done.
Juhász, a 6-foot-5 post player, transferred from Ohio State, where she was a two-time All-Big Ten player and graduated in three years. She has completed UConn’s two-year sports management master’s program in one year, with only her capstone project remaining. Her GPA? 4.0.
During her final year of
eligibility in the upcoming 2022-23 season, and the fall and spring semesters, Juhász will pursue either a second master’s or bachelor’s degree. There are different options, different routes to explore, toward one goal: becoming a sports psychologist.
That career, ideally, will follow a long run as a professional player. It was with those basketball aspirations in mind, among others, that Juhász chose to return to UConn for another season, a decision officially announced after her surgery but decided weeks earlier.
“I was going back and forth,” she said. “I didn’t see a reason why I would not come back. If I had a great season and was ready to move on to the next stage, I could see it. But everything is still brand new and I’m still learning. I haven’t seen the full potential of me with these amazing coaches and teammates. Closer to the tournament, I was like, I could really see myself coming back. Because I just have so much more to give. There is so much more and I haven’t showed it.”
Juhász averaged 7.3 points, 5.7 rebounds and 19.8 minutes last season as part of a frontcourt rotation with Olivia Nelson-Ododa and Aaliyah Edwards.
“I’ve got to give myself credit,” Juhász said. “I was adjusting to a new team, and not just a new team — to UConn. Everybody around me is so good. Hopefully next year, a different role. I’ve just got to step up. I already know they need more out of me and I need to be a leader on this team. I didn’t know anything (coming in). But I know for myself, for my last year, I need to give much more and I need to be much better.”
Juhász missed two consecutive games with a foot injury as January became February and rode a rollercoaster down the stretch. For example, in a two-game swing against DePaul and Marquette, Feb. 11 and 13, she combined for 43 points and 12 rebounds. But she went 0 for 6 from the field in UConn’s second-round NCAA Tournament game against Central Florida and played just three minutes in the Sweet 16 against Indiana.
Then came the NC State
game. She entered with 9:39 remaining in the second quarter and had a basket and two rebounds in threeplus minutes. With 6:19 left, she was fouled and injured.
“I’m going to make an impact; that was my mindset coming in,” Juhász said. “How can I be impactful right away? I know they need me in this game. I honestly felt the best I had the whole season.”
She snapped her fingers again.
“It was just hard.”
LOOKING AHEAD
Juhász, speaking on May 19, sat down at the Werth Center and said “Day by day,” as a way to explain how she’s doing. She pointed to a cast that has since been removed and talked about a different type of impact.
“I’m thinking, utilize what I have,” she said.
This was about her capstone project. About her legacy. About her future, too.
Juhász’s capstone project will focus on how studentathletes can go about recovering from major injury. She’s working closely with trainer Janelle Francisco and sports performance coach Andrea Hudy on her recovery, of course, but also on this project.
“I’m trying to create a healthy guideline, especially for incoming freshmen,” Juhász said.
Juhász tore an ACL in 2017, in the year before enrolling at Ohio State. She began working with a sports psychologist back home in Pecs, a city of about 150,000 in a country of about 10 million. She continued working with another while with the Buckeyes, and works with one at UConn, too.
She wants to share what benefits can be reaped through something so trying. She is compiling useful podcasts and books, building recovery plans focused on the mental and physical aspects, doing advanced research on techniques to stay focused in season and out, and mixing in her own experiences.
“So I can leave something behind,” she said.
Juhász and sophomoreto-be Caroline Ducharme, recovering from hip surgery, have been the only UConn players on campus in recent weeks. The apartment
Juhász shared with Bueckers, Christyn Williams and Amari DeBerry is now all hers, with Ducharme living alone right above her.
As Juhász spoke, Ducharme passed by on crutches. They spend daytimes together, rehabbing in the basketball facilities, and nighttimes together watching WNBA games.
“She’ll text me, ‘You want to come upstairs?’ ” Juhász said. “I say, ‘Of course. You can’t walk.’ It’s been a good way to spend time.”
UConn players report for summer session on Wednesday. Juhász will miss the June workouts but she expects to be able to dribble and shoot and absorb contact by August, when the team gathers again. She expects to be 100 percent by October, when preseason practice begins.
She recently traveled to Boston, sightseeing, and hopes for a trip to New York this summer, too. She will return to Pecs for time with family in July.
Juhász is extremely proud to represent her country. Considered one of the most talented Hungarian players, her dream is to play on the senior national team like her mother did in the 1990s. Juhász has played at every level of Hungarian basketball but hasn’t been able to join the senior national team for competitions because the run-up to tournaments such as the European Championships or World Cup, or Olympic qualifiers, have always coincided with her time as a student in the U.S.
Hajnalka Balázs was a standout for the national team and played professionally in Europe before ending her career in 1999 when she became pregnant with Dorka. In 1994, her professional team played an exhibition game against UConn in Storrs.
“It was an unforgettable experience, and it is even more special to me that my daughter got a chance to be playing for UConn and coach Geno Auriemma,” she said in an email.
“Basketball has been always a huge part of my life, so seeing Dorka playing the sport I love dearly is so special. I am so proud of Dorka for being successful and chasing her dreams because I know how much
hard work it takes to win and achieve those goals.”
Dorka is positive, gregarious, smiling as she describes the way her parents met. Her father was a college basketball player, part of a group that scrimmaged against her mother’s club team. They guarded each other. Zsolt kept trying to play defense on Hajnalka and kept trying to talk to her afterward.
“You know how guys are,” said Juhász, who has an older brother, Gergely. “It’s a fairy tale.”
Juhász loved the vibrancy of Columbus (population: 900,000) and loves the quaint setting of Storrs, which reminds her of the rolling hills in Pecs. She loves to sleep but she essentially works around the clock. She loves peace and quiet but she’s exceptionally chatty.
There is just a lot to her. A lot for her to overcome. A lot for her to accomplish.
“Dorka is a hard worker, and she is going to do everything in her power to come back stronger from this terrible injury, and we have no doubt she will do that,” Zsolt Juhász said. “Her desire to play at the Final Four and win the national championship in her last season is pushing her through the most challenging times.”
The work has begun. The only body part that Juhász can’t truly strengthen right now is her left wrist. She’s only doing range-of-motion exercises.
She’s focusing on lowerbody workouts and overall conditioning that will help her be more effective in the paint.
“There were options for surgery,” she said. “I could have waited a week, after the Final Four. But I just wanted to do it as soon as possible. I’ve never seen an injury like this. Hearing that it would not last until November also helped me like, ‘All right, I’ve got time.’
“My first Final Four, I could have played. But I couldn’t. That was hard. I’m glad I have another opportunity to hopefully be healthy and try to get back there and be that person who can help.”