Heritage alum honored for long fight back to mound

During his sophomore year with the Patriots, Jensen began noticing a serious problem with his left leg. It started in workouts. During physical education class, his leg would drag while running bleachers. During travel baseball, Jensen, then an outfielder, would have a hard time chasing down fly balls. Then, he began to drag his left leg during more routine activities, like walking around campus.

Initially, Jensen, who stands 6-foot-4 inches tall, thought it might have been a challenge of going through puberty. But eventually, his left side became partially paralyzed. Doctors eventually found a tumor on his spine, roughly the size of a lemon.

“I was on break from school and couldn’t walk around the house,” Jensen recalled. “I was in a wheelchair and completely unable to walk on my own. That was when they found it. I remember hearing the exact quote. They said if they had waited 24-48 more hours to do the X-ray, they think I would have been completely paralyzed from the waist down.”

Finding and removing the tumor was the first hurdle to clear but it was far from the last. After the surgery, Jensen spent a week in intensive care then more physical rehabilitation for a week at a Vallejo facility. While there, he had to relearn activities like moving his hands, brushing his teeth and standing up. Eventually, he began walking. Three weeks later, he went home.

From there, the gradual recovery process continued. After relearning how to walk, Jensen began running again. Eventually, he began working on other baseball activities, such as throwing and hitting, as well as lifting weights and rebuilding his strength.

“It’s a slow process. Each day there are small steps,” he said. “I was very hesitant on the mental side. It’s scary. On the mental side, you don’t know if you’re going to reinjure something.”

Early in Jensen’s senior season at Heritage, he experienced another problem. He was experiencing some of the same issues again. An MRI showed spinal curvature that required surgery. The bad news? It was going to sideline him for the rest of his senior season at Heritage. That news also came shortly after he received the offer to play at San Francisco State.

“I had to tell the coaches I wouldn’t be playing much my senior year,” Jensen recalled. “And my freshman year of college, I wasn’t going to be 100 percent. That was the COVID year and it actually gave me time to get my feet under me and catch up.”

Jensen was grateful to his teammates, as well as his parents, Bruce and Kirsten, and many other friends from home for their help in his recovery process.

Jensen was honored to receive the award several years after his initial plight began, knowing that his journey has been impactful to people. He enjoys hearing stories from people who say they were inspired and said that “being honored for that was something I’ll forever be proud of.”

While just returning to play again was a huge accomplishment for Jensen, but how did he do?

“I think with everything, there are positives and negatives,” he said. “The team wasn’t as good and personally I wasn’t as good as I wanted. But that doesn’t take away from the positives. I hit 90 mph for the first time in my career.”

“Being able to evolve as a college baseball player was really uplifting,” added Jensen. “It’s crazy that after 3-4 years I got to play a full season. Not a day goes by where I don’t appreciate that.”