Austin Jensen’s triumph: Beating odds after near-fatal accident (with video)

Austin Jensen stutter-stepped through the agility ladder and accelerated, sprinting another 20 yards across the track infield under the summer sun.

“Yes, Yesss, YESSS!” shouted Mike Smith, Manatee High School’s track coach. “Dude, that was pretty.”

Then he had Jensen run it again. And again.

The 21-year-old former Hurricane did so with abandon, despite the heat and humidity, flying down his grass comeback trail marked off by small orange traffic cones.

There was no crowd to roar its approval, like so many memorable Friday nights the two-time all-state linebacker enjoyed at Hawkins Stadium, but it didn’t matter.

Austin Jensen was euphoric.

“I feel freedom. Release. Being able to do what I really like doing,” said the senior Florida Atlantic University safety and special teamer. “I was skittish at first, feeling it out. But once I knew I was fine, it was exhilarating.”

Smith was buoyed, too.

After a near-fatal car accident six months ago, Jensen’s revival is remarkable.

“Looking back at what happened and all he’s been through? He’s much further than where I thought he’d be, much further,” Smith said. “He’s doing something I didn’t expect we would be doing.”

Neither did Jensen.

“I really shouldn’t be here at all,” he said. “I should’ve been dead.”

Lucky to be alive

Kim Jensen had feared the worst when she finally reached Delray Medical Center’s ICU after a frantic cross-state drive late on Saturday, Feb. 13.

“I thought he was going to be dead because of all the people there,” Austin Jensen’s mother recalled. “It was intense.”

She was in New Port Richey at the girls’ state weightlifting meet with daughter Lacie, an MHS senior, when they got the phone call about the accident.

Austin is the second of Kim and Mark Jensen’s three children. Son Tyler is their oldest.

“I had no idea what shape he was in,” his mother said. “I was out of it when they got me up to the room. It wasn’t what I expected to see. He was in a tremendous amount of pain.”

Austin Jensen had been a passenger in teammate Mickey Groody’s Ford Explorer, heading to FAU’s football banquet at a Boca Raton hotel just up Interstate 95.

According to the Florida Highway Patrol, the driver of a blue Nissan SUV was speeding north and abruptly changed lanes, causing the driver of a black Pontiac to swerve, clipping Groody’s vehicle in front of the left rear tire.

“I was sitting behind the driver and the car that hit us turned us sideways and we flipped three to four times,” Jensen said. “I went out the window, right through the glass. I wore my seat belt. I guess it unclicked or snapped off me.

“I hit shoulder first, then my head hit, then my bottom hit. I slid quite a ways, and our truck stopped rolling five feet from me.”