Flowing from the Nile to the Fenton
El Alfy follows her hoops dreams from Egypt to Uconn
When it came time to put pen to paper last week, Jana El Alfy had to stop herself for a second.
“Before I signed, I felt like, ‘yeah, I’m going to Uconn,’” El Alfy said Monday, after a practice with the Egyptian national team in Cairo. “Then, when I signed the papers, I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, it’s real. A dream came true. Everything is becoming real. I’m going to Uconn.’”
Uconn women’s basketball, Geno Auriemma, her favorite player Breanna Stewart, all of these things were just images on a TV screen on the other side of the world. But El Alfy, 17, reached to make it happen, signing her letter of intent to join the Huskies’ latest recruiting class.
“She was a huge, standout talent when we had our camp in Africa in 2019,” said Monica Rogers, who heads the NBA’S international program for developing women’s basketball. “I saw the same things everyone else saw, an elite talent, her physique for that region, tall, long, lanky, she was able to shoot it. She has very fine-tuned skills.”
Auriemma has been successful in finding overseas talent; his current team, which played Texas at Gampel Pavilion on Monday night, features Nike Mühl from Croatia, Dorka Juhász from Hungary, Inês Bettencourt from The Azores, part of Portugal, Aaliyah Edwards from Canada and Lou Lopez-sénéchal, born in Mexico and raised in France.
Now he has a player from Egypt, and El Alfy, 6-foot-4, hopes to inspire others to follow her.
“She wants to be a trailblazer,” Auriemma said. “She wants to be that person from that part of the
world who has never played at this level or go to the WNBA and help Egypt become a basketball country. Not that it isn’t, but it certainly doesn’t have that reputation around the world. Be a trailblazer, she really talks about that a lot.”
Said Rogers: “Jana’s a big sister. She has been a role model all her life.”
The Huskies have been stopped in the Final Four since 2016, but the program’s brand still stretches and resonates globally. Once she knew she was destined to be a basketball player, El Alfy never had a doubt she wanted to be a part of Huskies history.
“Uconn is well known for people who know basketball,” El Alfy said. “Wherever people know about basketball, they know Uconn has the best women’s program. All my friends, teammates, coaches, they know about Uconn and what an amazing university it is, that they have an amazing program, an amazing coach.”
Soccer is still the most popular sport in Egypt, El Alfy said, but “I never had any choice but to play basketball.” Her father, Ehab, coaches and put the ball in her hands when she was 3 years old, and she began playing for organized teams a couple of years later, following her dad around. Eventually, she played against her father’s team, and starred in the game, but her father prevailed on the scoreboard. “I’m really competitive,” she said. “I like to compete in everything.”
By the time she was 14, El Alfy was in the NBA’S camps and standing out, even among older girls, with exceptional versatility for her size.
“There is still a gap between women’s development in the U.S. and the rest of the world,” Rogers said. “We’re a little more advanced, so the fact she had some of these skills that girls in the U.S. had already made her stand out. She would have been the best player in Egypt in her age group, moving up, she was consistently the best in her age group every year.”
El Alfy played in the FIBA U18 African Championship for Egypt this year, averaging 24.7 points, 11.5 rebounds, and 2.5 assists. In 2021 El Alfy led her country to gold at the U17 African Championship, and she was in the NBA’S Basketball Without Borders program.
Stewart, who is also 6-4, became her favorite player. People often tell El Alfy she reminds them of Stewie, who won four championships at Uconn and is a perennial All-star and MVP candidate in the WNBA.
“I’ve always looked to Breanna Stewart,” she said. “The way she plays basketball, how she just gets the ball and goes to the rim, the way she shoots. Her moves and stuff. I like everything about Breanna Stewart.”
When she saw a game on TV, Uconn vs. Louisville in the NCAA Tournament, she saw her destination. El Alfy is the type of player that usually turns pro as soon as she can, and Auriemma knew that as soon as he saw her play.
“You go to all these world championships to see this team play, or that team, and you come out of there
every once in a while and you go, ‘wow,’” Auriemma said. “And usually those kids, you follow up and they’re pros, they sign with somebody and that’s it. Every once in a while you end up with somebody like Jana, a kid who wants to go to America, wants to go to school and be a part of all this and is a terrific student.”
El Alfy’s parents both have college degrees in Egypt and wanted that for Jana, so they were fully onboard with her dream to play at Uconn. They met with Auriemma on a Zoom call, then came to campus for a visit.
“I thought he was the same guy I saw on TV,” El Alfy said. “How humble he is, how kind he is. He’s really smart. He knows everything. He’s a legend, I like the way he coaches, the way he transforms players and gets them ready for the WNBA.”
So the decisions were made, and the dream started to gain velocity. Now, El Alfy closes her eyes and visualizes what it will be like, putting on the Uconn jersey for the first time, playing before the big crowds at Gampel Pavilion and the XL Center, and what her success could mean. She saw the many comments on social media welcoming her to Connecticut, which only makes her more excited to get here.
“I’m already imagining it right now,” she said. “I imagine all the fans around us. How big the crowd will be. [Being a role model] is really important to me. I want to encourage every Egyptian girl or boy to keep following their dreams, no matter what it takes. Just continue, and whatever you feel in your heart, just do it.”