Fram chats with Jana, SquashTV new radiant face
A “few years ago”, in Alexandria, a young girl, eleven, twelve?, appeared out of a corridor, greeted me with a “tu m’as manquée trop”, ‘I missed you so’. I looked at her, and I recognised her from Cairo Nationals.
Gifted, fluent in French as following the French school cursus, she had that kind of presence, that lovely smile, that energy that very few people are blessed with. Not to mention talent…
From that point on, I followed her career closely. Her victories, brilliant; her defeats, sad; her injuries. I tried to help her as much as I could in the background, and we became friends.
Then she disappeared forever, it seemed. I lost contact. It was my time missing her…
Then, out of the blue, I saw her reappearing at the Egyptian Open 2025, more beautiful than ever, working for my little Egyptian Brother, Omar El Sherbini, in his marketing agency.
I was so happy to see her looking good, positive, her energy level up. Then I see her commenting at the ToC for SquashTV. She rocked the screen. Then at Gouna, then the Worlds in Cairo… And lately at the Qatar event.
But whatever happened between those years where she seemed to go under the PSA Radar? Well, it’s a bit of a “Long Story, Fram”, as she stated as we started our chat…
Fram: So, girl, what happened to you
Jana: “It’s a long story, Fram.
So squash, obviously, my whole life, only thing that I’ve been doing forever.
I had signed with Wadi Degla in 2017, so I had to move from Alexandria to Cairo for my ‘Première and Terminale’ at the French Lycée. Then I went to the American University in Cairo, still playing squash competitively.
I was supposed to have my last World junior Open Covid year, and it got cancelled. So I was a finalist the previous one against Hania, 2019 in Malaysia. And then I won the next British Junior Open 2020. That was supposed to be my last junior career junior year. And I was training full on. I was a beast, I remember.
And then Covid hit.
Everything got cancelled, and I just got destroyed, mentally destroyed. And then, post Covid, I wasn’t the same as a player at all.
And that was the start of the end for me when it came to squash.
I struggled on the personal level a lot during college, and that obviously reflected on my squash, because squash was a big part of why I was struggling. And I’m a very 100% person. It’s black and white for me. I don’t do mediocre. I don’t like being mediocre.
And I knew that, obviously, I was a very good player and very skilful and all that. But, you know, if I’m not training, I’m not gonna win. It’s basic. It’s not anything complicated. It’s not chemistry. And either I train well, I get better, I win, or I just depend on how my nick and drop shots are on that day, especially as the women’s game has gone very physical.
Falling in love with New York…
I went to marketing school in the American University in Cairo and I was able to finish early, on December 22nd 2022. I was in the US January 23rd.
It wasn’t planned. I wasn’t training at all then. And I went to play the Carol Weymuller and the TOC, literally without having to hold the racket for almost a month and a half, almost 45 days.
I had a tough first-round loss against Fayrouz in Carol. I remember I played shit and I didn’t want to play, you know, I wasn’t really feeling it.
But then I was like, ‘oh, I love New York’.
I had been to New York before, but I hadn’t really been there for that long. It was three weeks, I remember. And I was like ‘you know what, Jana? Just enjoy New York’. I had a week in between both tournaments. I was coaching my friends, Egyptian players, because I lost because I didn’t have anything else to do.
And then I loved the TOC. It just felt right. And I was like, ‘you know what? Even if I hadn’t trained, fuck it, I’ll just enjoy it. I know how good of a player I can be. And anything else is just in my head. Even though I’m not maybe physically trained. Well, I’ll just give it all’. And it happened.
I created a couple of good upsets and got to the quarters, and I was like, okay, maybe it’s the New York effect. It was supposed to be a full three-week round trip only, as I had a full-time job as well back in Cairo: I was doing studies, squash, and a full-time job because I was paying my own tuition… I had taken three weeks off – they were supporting my squash a little bit.
I was supposed to finish TOC and go back, but after I beat SJ in the round of 16, literally before I even went off court to stretch, I was like, ‘I want to live in New York’.
Moving to NY
And no how, no why…. Nothing, just that’s how I felt.
Lost to Joelle in three in the quarters and I just pushed my flight, I think two or three weeks later because I had to go back. I only had like one piece of luggage, just one for three weeks. Only squash clothes, nothing else.
My parents had no idea. No one had any clue. I told a couple of my Egyptian friends, and they thought I was joking. I was not at all. I was supposed to get back at the end of Jan, but I finally got back to Egypt mid-Feb, because I had my graduation ceremony.
I wanted to be there, and I wanted to renew my passport because it was expiring. I wanted to get more clothes because I had nothing with me, and I wanted to say bye to my mom and everyone because they all thought I genuinely was joking until they saw me leaving again from Egypt in February.
So that happened. I quit the job that I had back home, and I moved back with absolutely nowhere to stay. No job, no visa, absolutely nothing. It was just me, my f*cked up brain, and the New York love that I had.
And that was it.
I was on a tourist visa, like a business thing, whatever. And usually people have six months before they have to leave the country. And I was like, okay, I have six months to figure out my shit. If I do, great. If I don’t, it’s not meant to be, and I’ll just go back home.
The income that I had for months was just coming from Squash events, because the second half of the season, a lot of tournaments are in the US So it was easy for me to play them. And that was it.
I ended up figuring out, got a job at Open Squash and a place to stay and everything. But that took me a while I found a job in around end of May. I was crashing at my friend’s couch all that time that I was going to NYU.
Doubles and the End of the Squash Road…
Obviously that year, at first, I was excited because, oh, I’m moving to New York, so maybe that will give me a push to train. It didn’t work.
It did for a bit, but it wasn’t enough for me to be where I should be. And I was like, you know what? Maybe that’s a sign for me to move to New York, do other things, and maybe not play squash. And I decided to stop playing the PSA Tour a couple of months after ToC.
The hardest decision of my life
The hardest decision of my life, but it was actually the easiest and the hardest, if that makes sense.
I also started playing hardball doubles when I stopped playing pro also, I loved it, the community, the people. You know, we travelled around on the weekends. It was fun. I was really good at it. I won a couple of tournaments. You know, there’s Osama Khalifa, Amr’s brother, who’s there, and he’s my guy. I love him so much. We were just the two Egyptians, just bashing everyone in the doubles court.
And unfortunately, a year after I retired single squash and played four year doubles, I was in Maryland, Baltimore, and I was playing a pro-am match before my actual match at a tournament. And I unfortunately tore my ACL, MCL and meniscus all at once during that pro-am match. I
instantly knew when I fell that I had popped a lot of things, not just some niggle. I heard them, I vividly remember them. And that was it of my double career.
Surgery and Loneliness
That was in October 24th. From October 24th to a year later, it was the hardest year of my life.
I have gone through every single thing alone in the U.S. You know, these things; you really want to have people around you. I have my people, I have my friends. But you know, living abroad, you know, it’s hard because, you know, everyone has their jobs. We Egyptians are very spoiled when it comes to stuff like that. This is not the case everywhere, especially in the US in New York.
I just walked into surgery alone, p*ssing in my pants because I have never had surgery before anyway, and I walked out of the surgery room alone, on crutches, just had no one.
The hardest six months ever. Obviously, I was all alone; I had no family to help. I went from a full high professional athlete to learning how to walk again and learning how to get out of bed, go pee within a 2-meter distance without falling or being hurt or in pain, to rehab, which is the shittiest thing ever, to pain, to my bank deciding to freeze all my accounts for three months, three days after my surgery,. So I didn’t even have the money to pay rent, and I had to ask my friends to help me, and I had to pay them back.
It was sh*t show.
And I couldn’t go back home as I would have lost my visa. So my mom was going crazy on the phone because I chose not to go back, do my surgery in Egypt and have that first couple of months with my mom helping me out; I would lose my visa because, initially, at that time, I still wanted to live in the US.
So I chose to “be an adult,” take it up, and do it all by myself because I knew that, long term, that was better. And that’s what I did. Do I regret it? Absolutely not. Was it hard? F*ck yes: no income, no job because I was bedridden, no money in the bank because I couldn’t get into any of my funds in the bank. Pure pain on drugs, high all the time. Life was sh*t.
I got depressed; I got fat as f*ck, whereas normally, I wouldn’t think about what I eat. I remembered I couldn’t get into three-quarters of my wardrobe, literally. So it was like a vicious cycle: depressed, I eat, I get fat, I look at myself in the mirror, I get depressed, I eat. It’s the whole cycle.
And I stayed like that for six months.
Life started to get a little bit better when I was thankfully able to get my green card. And I was also homesick as f*ck, obviously, because I was in La La land alone, and I couldn’t go home, I hadn’t gone home for two years. I haven’t seen my family in two years.
Of course, I have to stress that I wouldn’t have survived that period without my friends in New York. They were my family, but not my family-family, little details like spending Ramadan all alone…
So the minute I got my Green Card, my first thought was to go home. At first, I thought I’d stay for a month, but I moved to NY in the first place to run away from a lot of things happening at home…
Reflecting of those three years
At that point, I had stopped playing squash, lived in New York for almost three years, working at Open Squash and coaching the little kids there. I loved every single second of my life in New York. I left my heart and soul there.
Not only that, but those three years in New York changed me completely. I got back with a different perspective and I was, ‘Egypt is not that bad or as bad as I thought. Well, it is as bad: nothing changed, but I changed’. So I was looking at it differently.
That was over a year ago… What was initially supposed to be a four- to five-week vacation in Egypt became permanent, although I have gone to the US, I think, five times since because I left my heart and soul in New York. It’s always going to be home. And I will always have to go back and forth, one for my green card and two, just because I need to see my people there.
I love New York. It transformed me. I look at New York in a very philosophical way, and I love it. And it’s not for everybody. It’s either you hate it or you love it. And I love it.
New York is the kind of place that humbles the f*ck out of you, and it grounds you, and whoever you think you are, you are nothing. But at the same time, you can dream as high and as big as you can.
Back to Egypt
Fram: I guess coming back to Egypt after 3 years in NY must have been a shock to the system?
Yes, it’s really hard to come back fully in Egypt. So I need to keep move around.
It was a very, very tough decision for me to take. But seeing my family, my mom and everyone, and how, again, we Egyptians are very f*cking spoiled. We live a very spoiled, luxurious life, and obviously no one has that luxury if they’re living abroad alone. And I missed that.
Also, I had been so independent for so f*cking long. Even before I moved to the U.S. I was living alone since I was 17 years old. So, it was kind of ‘I’m done with this. I’m sick of this. I just need to settle and calm down’.
I still went back to NY at the end of my “holidays” as I had signed for a new job in Marketing over there – I didn’t want to coach anymore; I only did it until I had my Green Card.
“On the flight back to NY, I was crying my ass off”
Either I was sleeping or crying my ass off the whole 12 hours. Because I was like, why am I going back? I miss home. Arrived on a Tuesday; Wednesday was off. Thursday, first day of job, I didn’t like it, I quit on Friday. Saturday, I had booked my flight back to Egypt, and a week later I was back in Egypt.
Working for Sherbini
It took me a couple of months to settle in Egypt, and at the start of September, I was like, okay, if I’m gonna move here, I need to find a job. And I woke up one Sunday, found a story on Instagram from Omar El Sherbini: he had a job opening in his sports marketing department. I texted him.
I was like, can I just have more details? He was like, “aha. Who is it for? Not you, obviously”. I’m like, “no, it’s me”. He was like “what do you mean? Are you back?” Me: “I’m still figuring out. That’s why I’m asking”.
That was literally a week before the Egyptian Open, which was perfect. And then we talked, we got on, we got on a call and we met and he told me about the job. And I told him ‘who’s better to do that job than me, especially in the squash department. I know everyone, I was a squash player, I’m a marketing graduate, everything just fits really well.”
My first day of job was the dinner of the Egyptian Open. That was my first day at work. And that’s when I started working for Omar’s marketing company.
Fram: Tell me about SquashTV?
Jana: Rewind to a month and a half after my surgery; it’s ToC time. I’m on crutches, post op, fat looking sh*t, depressed, hatingsquash, hating my life, everything. But I usually coached the girls coming to NY for the Weymuller, the ToC, etc., like Mariam Metwally or Nada Abbas. And one day, we are sitting the three of us in the crowd, and the MC comes on court.
And it just popped into my head. Why don’t I do that? I can speak about squash, I’m good-looking, I dress well, I know the sport inside and out, I know everyone. Why don’t I do that?
It was kind of a way for me to still be on the Tour without me being on court. So I went to Beach (Lee Beachill, PSA COO). I remember vividly because I almost tripped with the crutches going to him at the back. I couldn’t see there was something on the floor! Nice entrance…
“Listen, I know the tournament already started, but I was just wondering if there’s a spot for me somewhere within the media team or like the comm team or whatever. I would love to help.” He went, “That’s great to hear; still, the tournament’s already started”. “I know, it’s not for now, just for food for thought later”. I didn’t mention it again.
Fast forward to the Egyptian Open 2025, I went to talk to Beach again, as it was the start of a new season, and told him I was commuting between Cairo and NY – where most of the tournaments happen. I also had a little chat with Lisa and Michael, they were very helpful, and two days later, I got an email from Andy “would you want to help us with the US Open for a couple of days?” I had to turn it down, as it was feasible logistically, but we agreed on the ToC and what a better tournament to start!
Loving it
I’m loving the studio. I’m loving it. I like to do dressing up as well, it’s a bit like being an actress without being an actress, it’s the best of both worlds. I’m still talking about squash, I’m the only Egyptian in there, it’s a responsibility, I am the face of my country. It’s great.
Of course, I’m just learning about TV, doing the thing that I love and talking about something that I love, love so much, although I’m told I speak a bit too fast.. That’s something I’m working on…”
Last words from Fram
And there you have the story of the girl that came from Hell to be reborn as the new face of our most important marketing tool, SquashTV.
She brings in knowledge of Egypt, she speaks three languages perfectly, she represents the number one nation in Squash who FINALLY has got a voice on SquashTV: Egypt. As you know, my second country…
She has more b… than most of the people I know; she is clever, beautiful inside and out, talented in so many different ways. I’m so proud of who she was, who she is now, how she fought, and I love who she is becoming.
