2025 True Heroes: Analyss Benally

ONE OF ANALYSS BENALLY’S most memorable basketball moments didn’t happen during a game. In fact, the Shiprock native didn’t even have a ball in her hands. 

Benally, who plays professionally in Europe, was hosting a camp last year on the Havasupai reservation, in Arizona. The 20 or so campers had gathered to watch Rez Ball, the Netflix film about a Navajo basketball team attempting to win a New Mexico state championship after the death of its star player, in which Benally had a small role. As the (spoiler alert) game-winning shot dropped through the net, a young camper sitting next to Benally tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Look, just imagine that could be me.” 

“It did something to my heart,” Benally says, her voice warm with emotion. “I never had a moment like that in my life. I really got to witness that moment of a kid being inspired, seeing himself being represented, where he’s from, the people he’s from.” 

Benally understands this better than most. She grew up on the Navajo Nation before moving to Wichita, Kansas, with her family at the age of 12 to support her older sister’s basketball dreams at Kansas Wesleyan University. A star in high school who scored more than 1,000 points in her career, Benally played at San Jose State before turning pro. Her career has taken her to leagues in Albania, Kosovo, Romania, and Croatia. “It’s been my goal since I was five,” says the 5-foot-7-inch guard. “It honestly feels like it’s what I am meant to do.”

Over the past four years, Benally and her father, Brian Benally, a varsity assistant basketball coach at Bloomfield High School, have held around 25 ABFive camps in New Mexico and across the country. “We try to get to the smaller communities,” Brian says from their home in Farmington. “Growing up on the rez can be hard, but [achieving success] can be done.” 

More than 200 kids signed up for Benally’s ABFive camp in Shiprock over the summer. “They want to touch her, they want to talk to her, they want pictures,” Brian says. “She enjoys being around the kids.” 

While the camps teach fundamentals like stretching, footwork, agility, and shooting mechanics, there’s a broader message at work as well. “She goes overseas, she learns new cultures, a new way to do things, she comes home, and she doesn’t keep that stuff to herself,” Brian says. “She wants everyone to learn from her and achieve more than she has.” 

Inducted into the North American Indigenous Athletics Hall of Fame earlier this year, Benally serves as inspiration both on and off the court. “Basketball isn’t who I am,” she says. “It’s simply the thing that’s given me so much. If you were to take it from me, I know exactly who I am and what I need to continue to do.” That’s why the camps are so important each summer. “If I couldn’t do basketball at all, I would definitely be working with the youth.”