As Tough As They Come

Albi Ndrenika dropped to his knees and slid across the slick glass of Ludwig Field on Aug. 30. The stadium lights flickered on and off, and he screamed in excitement. 

Ndrenika was accompanied by his teammates dog piling on top of him. The moment encapsulated a series of emotions experienced by the junior midfielder. He had scored a goal in his first game back on the field for Maryland men’s soccer after a 649-day hiatus. He played just 10 minutes, but his score in the 45th minute contributed to an impressive 5-2 win over Detroit and marked the beginning of Maryland’s 12-game unbeaten streak during the regular season. 

“I kind of blacked out when I saw the ball come to me because it was surreal, the touch to finish,” Ndrenika said. “It was just instinct. I had to watch the replay and see what I did for the celebration. … I can't even put into words what it meant for me to be back and share that moment with my teammates. It was magical.”

Ndrenika missed the entire 2023 season due to a rare ailment — one that, although not confirmed, is believed to be tied to an initial malaise that forced him to miss the first 10 games of his 2022 freshman season.  

Standing 5-foot-10, 175-pounds, Ndrenika added four assists to his 2024 campaign and has become a key contributor for the Terps as they make their 41st NCAA Tournament appearance. Head coach Sasho Cirovski referred to him as a warrior. 

“He is as tough as they come,” Cirovski said. “He’s from the state of Maryland and loves the University of Maryland. When he plays with the Maryland uniform on, it means something more. … Our prayers were answered as far as him getting back to health. But I knew that with his resilience and toughness, he was going to fight until the very end to find a resolution.”

Just The Beginning 

Ndrenika was ready to make his mark with Maryland men’s soccer in his first season with the program. He enrolled in the university early, getting a head start by being with the program during the 2022 spring season. He was just 17 at the time. 

The opportunity allowed him to adjust to Division I soccer, as he even started four of Maryland’s five Spring Soccer Cup matches. When it came time for the next school year’s fall semester, he added experience by playing summer ball with Christos FC — a soccer club in Baltimore that competes in the United Soccer League (USL) and Maryland Major Soccer League. 

“I really got fit as well and was feeling very good,” Ndrenika said. “I had high expectations coming into my actual freshman season that fall, where things count.”

Ndrenika played through a lower back ache over the summer but never thought much of it because it didn’t slow him down. But once the preseason rolled around, the achiness had gotten worse. The freshman took Advil and worked with trainers. However, two games into the preseason, his treatment method stopped working.   

He suddenly couldn't run without his back causing immense pain. Multiple MRIs showed he had inflammation in his sacroiliac joint. It was labeled as a stress reaction that wasn't too severe but required two weeks off from any activity.  

However, Ndrenika’s time away from the team was longer than a few weeks. After the initial recovery, he was permitted to initiate progressive overload training. He experienced setbacks and missed the first 10 games of the season. He admitted being sidelined was tough for him as he had high expectations. He thought he failed his first big test and even debated redshirting. 

“Our best players don't last four years at Maryland,” Cirovski said. “He started school half a year early, so within three and a half years, he would have his degree. I said, ‘Even if we get you for 20% this year, we expect you to get a full three years in, get your degree and then move on to play professionally.’”

Cirovski convinced Ndrenika not to redshirt. The Hall of Fame coach's confidence in his freshman pushed Ndrenika to return better than before. He also credits his teammates and family with adding mental support.

Nick Richardson was one of those teammates, then a redshirt senior team captain. Ndrenika spoke with him frequently in the training room and observed how he dealt with his injuries. Richardson often had his knees treated. According to Ndrenika, he never complained and simply did what he needed to do to take the field. 

One family member who provided support was Ndrenika’s older brother, Joni. He currently plays soccer at Saint Francis but was playing at Wilmington at the time of his younger brother’s injury. The brothers spoke on the phone every day. There were also a few instances in which Joni made the two-hour drive to Maryland to watch his brother’s games and see him in person.  

“I would always bring a couple of guys from Wilmington as well to come to watch Maryland,” Joni said. “Maryland soccer games are pretty fun to watch. The crowd gets the game going. On top of obviously wanting to see my brother, it's also entertaining. It made it a no-brainer.”

Ndrenika returned for the second half of the season, making his debut against Northwestern and later recording starts in each of Maryland’s NCAA Tournament games. He scored in each of those postseason appearances. It looked like he was primed for a colossal breakout heading into next season. 

“I felt like I was getting better,” Ndrenika said. “It ultimately showed in the last two games where I got the start and finally felt normal again. That edge of playing in the tournament was big.”

Second Year Breakout? 

As the 2023 spring semester rolled around, Ndrenika had another solid start. The Terps defeated Clemson — the reigning national champions. They also went on a 10-day trip to Portugal, where Ndrenika learned how soccer was played in Europe. He says he felt more mature and comfortable as a player and leader while getting faster, stronger and better each week.

However, during one of the last two weeks of the spring season, Ndrenika began experiencing slight pain on the left side of his hip and groin. Modest setbacks are common, but after experiencing an extended absence last season, he was shut down until the upcoming fall season. He spent his summer on campus working with trainers and rehabbing to be healthy for the upcoming season.  

In early August, Ndrenika felt he was in the best shape of his life. He scored a left-footed goal during one of the Terps’ preseason games. The feat was significant because he was previously prohibited from shooting with his left, as that was the side of his body he was rehabbing. Everything felt great, but that all changed after he woke up on a Sunday morning after playing two games in two days against American and ECU.  

“Throughout the night, I was tossing and turning,” Ndrenika said. “I couldn't really sleep. I got one or two hours of sleep, and then I woke up in the morning with immense pain. Everything was locked up.”

After the second game, Ndrenika felt familiar discomfort in his hip and groin areas. He received treatment following the match but could barely walk the next day. He called his trainer, Katelyn Engen, at 7 a.m. Based on what Ndrenika described, Engen initially thought he had a severe case of dehydration. 

Ndrenika lived at Denton Hall at the time, which was a considerably long walk to the trainer’s office. He limped to the facility, and on his way, he grabbed two Gatorades from a vending machine and chugged them. He then began laying with his feet on the wall in the training room to try to ease the pain. Nothing was happening. 

He then got carted to an ice tub to numb his whole body. Kerry Dziczkaniec, Maryland’s Coordinator for Olympic Sports, even picked up medicine from a nearby CVS Pharmacy.    

“Return to play was like the fifth, sixth, seventh [priority],” Engen said. “It's always top of mind, but it was how do we get him to be comfortable in any capacity? How do we get him not to feel like his whole body is on fire? How do we support him so they can go to sleep? … In terms of my professional experience, this was certainly the most alarming and confusing.”

Road To Recovery

Ndrenika described his lower abdomen and groin area as feeling like a rock. The muscle relaxers helped ease the pain temporarily, and it was thought he might have osteitis pubis — inflammation in the joint between his pubic bones. However, an MRI revealed that wasn’t the case.  

The young soccer star continued to experience unbearable pain for the next month. His team had already begun their 2023 campaign, while Ndrenika was bedridden and unable to do functional everyday tasks.

“When he was telling me and my parents that he couldn't get out of bed, that was concerning,” Joni said. “At that point, when his situation was that serious, I knew that he was constantly talking to doctors, constantly talking to my family about how he was feeling. I knew the whole situation was occupying his mind a lot. I felt, instead of trying to talk to him about what was going on with his health and situation, let me just try to get his mind out of it and talk about other things.” 

He eventually got blood work done and tested positive for a protein called HLA-B27. The protein is found on the surface of white blood cells, helping the body's immune system distinguish between its cells and harmful substances. HLA-B27 blood tests are used to help diagnose or confirm autoimmune disorders. Doctors then thought he had ankylosing spondylitis (AS) — a type of arthritis that causes inflammation in the spine and other joints. 

Ndrenika went in for rheumatology for AS treatment. He was subsequently placed on Enbrel — a medication used to treat autoimmune diseases. He administered injections once a week and finally began running and working with a soccer ball in early October. He thought a return to the Terps’ lineup was possible. Even Engen was optimistic, but she set the bar low. 

“I was like, ‘If you're playing 30 minutes a game, I'm gonna call that a huge win,’” she said.

However, there wasn’t hard evidence to prove Ndrenika had AS. Coupled with the fact that the medicine he was taking at the time was unhealthy if he didn’t have the condition, he stopped taking Enbrel. Two weeks passed, and he flared up in his back. He couldn’t walk again without experiencing pain. Ndrenika subsequently returned to Enbrel, but he wasn’t feeling better this time after a few weeks. 

Doctors told Ndrenika that the medication could take a while to kick in again when one stops and starts consuming it. He spent another two to three months on Enbrel, which took him to January 2024 — the fall season wrapped up in late October.

“It was looking like his college career could be done,” Cirovski said. “We talked about him being medically ineligible, staying on getting this degree and becoming a player assistant while we kept working towards a solution.”

To add to the mental toll of everything, the Terps finished 2023 with a 4-8-3 record while going winless in conference play. The season was a total obscurity, as a Cirovski-led Terps team hadn’t finished with a losing record since he first became head coach in 1993 (excluding the shortened 2020-21 COVID-19 season). Furthermore, the Terps had previously never gone winless in the conference under Cirovski. 

Although the season didn’t go as anticipated, the team stuck together. That included looking out for Ndrenika, even though he wasn’t on the field with his team.  

“Even though the season was going very bad, and there was a lot of potential for a lot of negative energy, I give a big thanks to my teammates who were always there for me and supporting me,” Ndrenika said. “I have a lot of close friends from that team that I had known for a while just because of the proximity in which we lived. They were always checking in on me, helping me when I needed it and lifting me up. I can't thank them enough.”

Trial And Error 

Ndrenika finally started to feel better again, but he made it through his days by taking 6-8 Advil. He switched to another medicine similar to Enbrel — Humira. But after a month on the drug, he felt no improvement. Ndrenika had tried everything, so he searched for other opinions from doctors. 

“My brain was just on a loop,” Engen said. “I was like, what is going on? How are we going to get this under control?” 

One of his doctor’s assistants suggested doing a full-body CT scan. They were looking for anything: infections, autoimmune diseases and even cancer. However, the doctors spotted an abnormality between his T11 and T12 vertebrae.   

A biopsy of the area ensued. Doctors took a piece of his disk, ran it through labs and found a bacterial infection. He was placed on antibiotics, but the spinal infection was so deep he was on them for 8-10 weeks. Most people are on the same antibiotics for 3-6 weeks. 

Ndrenika was prohibited from any sort of physical activity. Engen says that around this time, he was the most down she had seen throughout the entire process. 

“I think that’s what killed me the most because at least I was maintaining some sort of fitness, whether it was lifting upper body or doing some light jogging or whatnot,” Ndrenika said. “But throughout that summer, I just shut everything down.”

He was cleared to begin physical activity again in mid-June, but the most challenging part of his return to the field had just started. According to his brother, he became frail. Ndrenika had a short time to prepare for the preseason. He did enough to play sparingly, and a follow-up look at the bone determined he was infection-free.  

Ndrenika finally found comfort with his fitness and was set to make his regular-season comeback against Detroit, Maryland’s third regular-season game of 2024. He referred to his comeback date as “God’s timing.” As the season continued, he earned more minutes and increased his fitness. 

To this day, no doctor has been able to explain what caused his infection. They also can’t prove the two ailments he experienced are related. 

“It was unfortunate that you had to wait at least two or three months for that medicine to see if it would actually work," Ndrenika said. "That was the reason why it took so long.”

The Three F’s 

Faith, family and friends kept Ndrenika motivated throughout his unprecedented journey. He got deep in his faith the second time and regards that as one of the significant differences between the two setbacks. 

“I think my freshman year injury took more of a toll mentally than the second injury,” Ndrenika said. “Just because the ways I would handle myself this time around were a little better.”

Ndrenika’s family resides in Olney, Md. Their proximity allowed them to visit their son frequently. They brought him food, kept him company and provided whatever he needed. Ndrenika and his family imagined how much worse the situation would’ve been if he had been across the country instead of 30 minutes away. 

“He handled the situation really well,” Joni said. “He was very positive. It affected him mentally a little bit, don't get me wrong. But he didn't show it that much. He was very mature with his emotions and was very understanding with doctors and everybody trying to help him.”

Ndrenika's friends and teammates were also very supportive, but none more than his coach and trainer. At one point during the process, Ndrenika’s family insurance took a long time to process a payment to cover some of his medicine. Cirovski found out and was willing to help pay for it. 

“I told him to get the medicine, and we'll find a way to get it paid for that is NCAA compliant,” Cirovski said. “We were not going to let him not get the medicine he needed because of cost. I care for all my kids when they go through difficult times like that. I think it's very important for not only myself but all of us to be there for them and support them.”

Engen was beside Ndrenika throughout his comeback. She provided constant support and observed how he approached his rehab. He never made excuses, never complained and maturely handled everything despite his frustration. 

She credited the people in his circle for being there for him and applauded Ndrenika's response to everything. 

“I don't know if I could adequately put into words how proud I am of him, and then also just the whole network of us around him,” Engen said. “I think everyone has shown the best versions of themselves in caring for him.”

She continued. “Ultimately, the way that he has processed everything, he's always been very aware and very connected with the reality of the situation. … Many days were not good at all, but he still would come in with positivity and commitment. I have a handful of athletes I've worked with in my career that I would put on the level of maturity and management of tough situations.”