The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
New Husky El Alfy adjusting well in Storrs
STORRS — Growing up in Egypt, Jana El Alfy had never experienced snow.
That changed on Jan. 23 — on the 17-year-old’s first full day in Storrs after arriving in Connecticut to join the UConn women’s basketball program a semester early.
El Alfy was greeted with about three inches of snow and below-freezing temperatures on her first day of college last month. She was introduced to her new hometown crowd inside Gampel Pavilion that night as she sat on the sideline for UConn’s win over Butler.
“To be honest, I wasn’t prepared for it at all. I wasn’t expecting it, like snow,” she said Tuesday afternoon. “But actually, it’s my first time seeing snow, like ever. So, getting to experience that in my first day, it was kind of cool.”
Now, almost a month later, El Alfy has formed close friendships with her new teammates — especially her fellow international players — sharpened her skills on the court, and even already impressed her new coaches.
While she isn’t expected to play this season (UConn coach Geno Auriemma said last month that if El Alfy comes in even just for one game this season, she’d burn a whole year of eligibility), El Alfy is getting a head start on learning what life will be like as an active player next year.
“I was overwhelmed at first, but everyone is helping me,” she said. “I mean like the coaches, the staff like my teammates, they help me a lot with everything, even in school. It’s like hard for me to come here, especially because I came all the way from Egypt. But I didn’t feel like I was alone, or I didn’t know what to do because my teammates were here next to me like all the time and the coaches and everyone that’s helping me.”
El Alfy committed to UConn this fall. She wanted to join a program that would challenge her and prepare her for playing on the professional stage. Growing up being coached by her dad
— who is the Egyptian women’s national team head coach — she fell in love with the sport early on and wanted to be coached in college by someone who would push her just as hard. Enter Geno Auriemma. El Alfy says Auriemma reminds her of her dad in how hard they both coach her on the court. And it was when associate head coach Chris Dailey personally flew to Egypt to meet El Alfy in person, that she knew UConn was the place for her.
She graduated from high school early this fall and decided to enroll a semester early at UConn to get a head start in adjusting to college-level coursework and to the demands of a student-athlete.
“I wanted to come here to like adjust earlier and just, you know, like, get the schoolwork going on and just start earlier,” she said. “I thought it’d be better for me like I thought it’d be easier for me like next year when I start playing.”
Despite the snowstorm on her first day and missing the winter semester’s first week of classes, El Alfy says she’s been adjusting well to life in Storrs. She’s met new friends outside of her teammates, even befriending other international students from Egypt, and has learned her way around campus.
El Alfy is one of six international players on UConn’s roster of 13. She said having teammates who understand what it’s like to start school and live in a new country has made a huge difference in her adjustment.
“It was really, really helpful,” she said. “I like that a lot especially like we all came from different places. So, it’s really interesting to know more, like, about each other’s culture and everything actually. Obviously, it was hard for Nika (Mühl, from Croatia), Dorka ( Juhász, from Hungary), and like everyone at first when they got here, but they really helped me a lot with everything.”
Juhász remembers how hard it was for her when she first moved to Ohio from Hungary. She battled homesickness and struggled with working around time differences to talk to her family. Juhász, who transferred from Ohio State to UConn in 2021, said UConn does a good job of helping international student-athletes adjust quickly.
“She’s adjusting super quickly and she’s a great kid. I think she fits perfectly into our team,” Juhász said of El Alfy. “… I think UConn is doing an amazing job of like, helping through these processes and especially that we have so many internationals like it’s good to have somebody to rely on and you’re not the only one. But I mean, it’s also good to see that UConn loves international players … I think we’re all very grateful for it. I think, you know, everybody’s in our corner.”
While El Alfy can’t help the Huskies on the court during games, having her in practice does give the team an extra body to run drills and step in to give others rest.
El Alfy participates in the team’s pregame warmups before games and during the media-viewing portion of practices. She said on Tuesday that she isn’t participating in the full practice during the week just yet. Instead, Dailey has been leading her through individual workouts to get better assimilated with UConn’s level of play.
Auriemma has been impressed with what he’s seen in the freshman.
“The things that you wanted to see, she has a feel for where she wants the ball and how, how well she runs the floor,” he said. “She’s had to learn our style of play, and what we want from those guys. But skill level, yes. She’s very skilled and she’s got a little bit of edginess to her too.”
Auriemma said he noticed El Alfy plays with an “edge” similar to that of former international Husky Svetlana Abrosimova, who came to UConn from Russia.
“I worked out Sveta for half an hour when she got here off the plane,” Auriemma recalled on Tuesday. “She landed at JFK, came up here and (I) said, ‘You want to work out?’ and she said, ‘Yeah.’ (We) went out on the court. Worked out. I came back in the office and said, ‘That’s the best player to ever come to Connecticut.’ You can tell in half an hour. So, you can tell a lot by how a kid approaches everything that you ask them to do. It’s gonna take a little bit for it to translate into game-action because she’s (El Alfy) not gonna play until next November. But she’s got it. She’s got it.”
El Alfy says she embraces being both a physical and finesse-type of forward. She’s been working on her 3-point shot and driving to the basket all while playing up to the speed and physicality of the college game.
“I think it’s been wonderful,” Aubrey Griffin said of El Alfy’s addition. “Like everyone’s still getting to know her and like, her personality is starting to grow, like show more. But I think it’s been a good adjustment for her. She’s doing really well in practice, just to be like, coming from high school getting thrown into this. It’s hard.”
El Alfy got her first taste of just how big the UConn stage can be when the Huskies hosted No. 1 South Carolina in front of a sold-out crowd at the XL Center.
“I don’t know how to explain it. It was amazing,” El Alfy said of the game’s environment. “Like, like the fans, like the vibes with the game. It was just different. Back home, we used to have like a lot of fans, but in COVID we didn’t have that many fans, but it wasn’t like a lot like here, you know. Here it’s different. Like I was so excited for (that) game and can’t wait to play. It made me really more even excited to be in the game.”
El Alfy is the first Egyptian to put on a UConn jersey. And even though she won’t make her official game debut until next fall, she’s ready to make an impact.
“I want to be prepared for what’s coming next for me and I’m really excited,” she said.