How Jana El Alfy got an assist from Breanna Stewart during achilles recovery

Shortly after Jana El Alfy underwent surgery to repair a ruptured achilles last summer, she got a call from an unknown number with a New York area code. Despite some hesitancy, she picked it up.

“Hey, this is Breanna Stewart,” said a voice on the other line.

El Alfy was floored.

“I was like, ‘Oh, hi,’” she recalled with a laugh on Friday. “She's my role model. I've always looked up to her when I was younger — like, always. She’s my all-time favorite player.”

Stewart wanted to check in with El Alfy about her injury and provide any help she could. When the legendary Husky suffered a torn achilles of her own back in April 2019, NBA superstar Kevin Durant reached out to help her with the recovery since he’d already been through it himself. Stewart paid it forward by helping El Alfy through her journey.

“She gave me tips,” El Alfy said. “She’s been texting me like non-stop and it's just been great watching her and learning a lot from her.”

That initial phone call came at the perfect time, too. When El Alfy went down, she was wrapping up a dominant performance at the U19 World Cup with Egypt in which she led the tournament in scoring at 21.4 points per game. Not only that, she had arrived at UConn ahead of schedule in January 2023 to get a head start on preparations for her freshman year.

Then in an instant, El Alfy found herself staring down a year-long absence from basketball. She was understandably down — until Stewart rang.

“When I got that phone call, it was just everything to me,” El Alfy said. “I had just got my surgery and I wasn’t in the best place. So her calling me just changed everything.”

El Alfy is closing in on the 11-month mark since the initial injury. Even though she’s not yet back to 100 percent, she’s made significant progress. She went through warmups with the team at the end of this past season and is now a partial participants during summer workouts.

“I can practice, I’m doing most of practice. Definitely limiting my load, not going 100 percent. Close to 80 percent,” she explained. “I can still do a good 90 percent of practice, but I just have to still maintain my load because I gotta take it step by step.”

At this point, there’s no one hurdle that El Alfy has to get over in order to be fully back. She just has to see the process all the way through.

“I would say a little bit of everything,” she said when asked what the last 20 percent of her recovery entails. “I'm not satisfied with what I have right now. I always want more and I will always want to get better at whatever. If it's mobility — if it's good, I want it even better. I want to be excellent. And excellent is not even enough for me. So I'm always hungry for more and I'm never gonna stop keep working hard.”

The good news? El Alfy should be ready to go for the start of the season in November.

“That’s the plan,” she said.