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The icing on the cake of Ayah Elnady's American dream

A week with mom & a visit from dad bring taste of home to Lawrence for KU senior and native Egyptian

8 min read
KU senior Ayah Elnady smiles during one of hundreds of practices in her time at Kansas. [Chance Parker photos]

Five years ago, KU’s Ayah Elnady moved 6,500 miles across the world, from Cairo, Egypt to Lawrence, Kansas, to live out her dream of playing volleyball in the United States.

During that time, she’s gone home for breaks to visit family and stayed as connected as possible to her roots.

But in the past 10 days, her roots came to her, when her mother, Reham, and father, Ahmed, made the trek to Lawrence for the first time together to help Elnady celebrate Senior Night.

“It has been awesome,” Elnady recently told R1S1 Sports in an interview about her parents’ visit and the end of her time at Kansas. “I just kept looking in the stands, thinking, ‘They’re here.’ Walking out with them was awesome, and getting to show them around where I have been living the past few years was great.”

Elnady’s parents had visited Lawrence before, but only separately. Her father came in 2021 following Elnady’s surgery to repair a herniated disc in her lower back that kept her out for the entire 2021 season. And her mother came the year after to watch her play upon her return.

But they had never been here together. And it almost didn’t happen this time either.

“My mom was so excited,” Elnady said. “And I had to like convince my dad to come, just because he doesn’t like traveling a lot and he doesn’t even know what a Senior Night is. We don’t have anything like this in Egypt. He was like, ‘You will be fine; your mom will be there.’ And I was like, ‘No, dad, you have to be here, too.’”

Ahmed came and took his daughter’s arm as she was introduced as one of six seniors being honored that night last week. But there was one small problem with Ahmed being here. It tied his stomach in knots.

“My dad never watches me play,” Elnady said with a laugh. “Even in Egypt. So, him watching me play here, at like a higher level, really meant a lot to me. He supports me a lot, but he gets really nervous. So, he doesn’t really like to watch me play. It’s too much for him.”

KU lost that Senior Night match to BYU in four sets, and that was enough for Ahmed, who returned to Egypt, leaving mom and daughter to play out the rest of the season together.

The Jayhawks’ strong season earned them the No. 12 overall seed in the upcoming NCAA Tournament and the right to host first- and second-round matches. So, Elnady and her teammates will get another chance to go out on top at home while Reham will get the chance to see it.

Their first match is set for 6:30 p.m. tonight at Horejsi Family Volleyball Arena against Colgate. If the Jayhawks win, they’ll advance to Saturday’s second round, where they would meet the winner of NC State-Florida for a trip to the Sweet 16.

While celebrating their daughter’s volleyball journey has been at the center of this most recent visit, Reham has been able to soak up even more of Elnady’s American lifestyle.

She’s staying with her daughter in her dorm on campus and, together, the two have cooked meals, taken walks, gone shopping, met friends and just enjoyed the chance to hang out.

Elnady and her mom even sat with KU volleyball coach Ray Bechard and his wife, Pam, at a recent KU men's basketball game at Allen Fieldhouse.

“It has been so fun living with Ayah, especially since we don’t get to spend a lot of time together since she left for the U.S.,” Reham told R1S1 Sports through translation help from her daughter. “My favorite part was meeting the coaches and just seeing how much they love and care about Ayah and just realizing that she had a second family here for the past 5 years. I have also enjoyed walking down Mass Street and getting ice cream with her.”

So far, they mostly have cooked American dishes — steak, salmon bowls, shrimp and pasta — but Elnady is counting on her mother to make her favorite taste of home, chicken shawarma, before she leaves the country.

“I told her to make it,” Elnady said with a grin. “That’s the first thing she makes when I go back home. It’s our tradition.”

Elnady’s journey to Kansas began in a unique way.

With the KU coaches watching a local recruit who spent time playing with the U.S. national team, they caught a glimpse of Elnady when the U.S. played Egypt.

Others did, too, and, that, along with Elnady’s decision to send highlight tapes to college coaches in the United States, led to offers starting to come her way.

Bechard and his coaching staff were interested but did not want to become too committed until they knew whether Elnady liked what she saw in Lawrence.

“Other schools offered right away after seeing my video, but
Coach B was like, ‘No, come for a visit. We want to see you and we want you to see everything and make sure you want to be here,’” Elnady recalled.

So, after the fall season ended, she made her way to Lawrence and to the United States for the first time. A 24-hour trek with two long layovers led to her setting foot in Lawrence in January. And it did not take her long to feel a connection.

“When the coaches here at KU responded, they seemed really interested and I was like, ‘I don’t know, they seem too good to me,’” Elnady joked. “I just didn’t know that it was gonna work out. But I was so excited and kept talking to them. So, I guess I got lucky.”

She was in Lawrence for two days on that first visit and then made her way back to KU in July as a member of the team.

“I probably spent more time at the airport on that first trip than I did at KU,” she said with a laugh.

From there, things went great pretty quickly. She was a contributor as a true freshman and a bit of a pleasant surprise. But then a back injury hit her the summer after her freshman season, forcing her to miss her entire sophomore year in 2021 to get it fixed.

“I feel like I just had to because the pain was just too much,” she said. “I visited with the surgeon and he said, ‘I don’t think it will get better without surgery.’ Everyone thought surgery was the best option.”

She had surgery in September of 2021 and was out of volleyball completely for the next five months.

“It was really tough because I really love playing and I just hate sitting at home doing nothing,” Elnady said.

For the first month of recovery, she was barely allowed to move, dealing with limits on how much she could even walk.

But she said she knew as soon as the surgery was over that she not only would feel better but that she also would play better than ever before.

“I’ll give it all to Dr. Joshua Bunch, my surgeon, and Ann (Wallace) and Luke (Bradford) for getting me back stronger so I could play again. Right when I came out of surgery, I had like zero pain. I wasn’t even in pain from the surgery. It didn’t hurt at all. They gave me a lot of pain killers and I wasn’t even taking them.”

Ahmed was here during those five months to help her through some of her rehab, and that’s what made his return last week — three full years later — special for Elnady and her family.

“It meant a lot for me and my husband to be here for Ayah’s Senior Night,” Reham told R1S1 Sports. “My husband was happy to see her play here for the first time since when he visited before Ayah was having surgery and it was a tough time.”

It’s been all smiles since the start of the 2022 season, when Elnady returned with a bang and followed it up with solid, if not spectacular, 2023 and 2024 seasons.

Earlier this week, the 5-foot-10 outside hitter was named first team all-Big 12 for the second season in a row.

“I feel like last year was good, too,” she said. “But it’s definitely better than before the surgery.”

So, now it’s all about the final chapter.

With her mom here to witness it and her father comfortable hearing all about it back home, Elnady knows that her time as a Jayhawk is winding down.

While her focus remains on helping Kansas make as deep of a run as possible in the NCAA Tournament, the nearing of the end has also allowed her to reflect on her American journey.

“When I came here, I could hold a conversation, but I might’ve needed a couple of seconds to think about what I would say or how I was gonna respond,” she noted of her English at the time. “Certain words, I had no idea what they meant.”

For the most part, people worked with her. There were times when those in her new KU family teased her about it.

“Especially (assistant coach) Billy (Ebel),” Elnady said with a huge smile. “But it’s OK.”

“Coming here, I didn’t know what to expect. So, I was just going with the flow. But I feel like I’ve found another family. I just didn’t know that I would connect with them that much, the coaches, my teammates, everyone. My experience here has been amazing. “I feel like I just gained a lot from this experience — seeing the country, developing my personality and volleyball skills, speaking better English — and I’m just so thankful for everyone here.”

Her plan after Kansas is to return home to possibly play volleyball in Egypt while starting her finance career and she hasn’t ruled out the idea of playing professionally in Europe if the opportunity arises.

But she thinks her time in America is probably up. In large part because her time at KU is.

“It’s so sad,” she said. “It doesn’t feel like it’s here. It’s gonna hit me when I’m in Egypt, like, ‘I’m not going back.’ Because I was surrounded by such great people, I feel like I could never find another experience in the U.S. that’s the same as this one.”


— For tickets to all KU athletic events, visit kuathletics.com

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