She had twins as a teen. One year later, she’s back in a Division I starting lineup.
Keneika Jensen made an immediate impact at Cal State Bakersfield, starting 16 of 19 games as a true freshman for the women’s soccer team and earning a spot on the WAC’s all-tournament team.
But after the final whistle blew on the 2016 season, Jensen figured her career was over. The then-18-year-old Mountain View High grad rushed to buy a pregnancy test the day before the conference tournament semifinals, and it confirmed her worst nightmare.
A member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jensen feared what her parents would say, that she’d disappointed her teammates, how all her dreams — a college soccer career and education — were finished.
“I made this decision. I made this choice. I made this mistake,” Jensen said. “And now the choice I made, everyone is going to see it. A lot of people make mistakes and people don’t see it. Mine is going to be seen.
“It was just … embarrassing.”
But two roller-coaster years later, and with 16-month-old twin boys in tow, Jensen’s career is back on track. She’s started the past five games for the Roadrunners (6-10-1), who open the WAC tournament as the No. 6 seed and will face No. 3 UT Rio Grande Valley (12-5-2) at noon Wednesday in Orem, Utah.
“I don’t know how she does it,” her father, Ken Webster, said. “I was down there a couple weeks ago and it blows my mind. The kids are everywhere.”
Returning to the field never entered Jensen’s mind when she left Bakersfield in 2016. Then the other shoe fell. On her first day back in Boise, a doctor informed her that she was carrying twins.
“I cried, and my husband smiled,” Jensen said. “I was kind of freaking out, because my family has a lot of twins and I know a lot of twins.
“Every parent who has twins says you don’t remember the first year. It’s rough. In the long run it pays off, but the next five years of your life are going to be insane.”
With the news delivered, the couple buckled down. They got married in January 2017. Jensen moved in with her in-laws, working eight hours a day as a nurse and four hours a night as a nanny. Her husband, Makade Jensen, went to class for five hours a day before heading to a graveyard shift at UPS.
“That was rough because I’m going from being a D-I athlete to now I’m working two jobs and I’m pregnant,” Jensen said.
Jensen gave birth to the boys — Easton and Jaren — on June 9, 2017. While they are fraternal twins, Jensen admits that they look exactly alike.
Soccer never fully left Jensen’s life, as she drove the girl she nannied to practices and helped coach the Mountain View girls team that fall. She started toying with the idea of playing again and a trip to watch the Broncos and former FC Nova club teammate Raimee Sherle tipped the scales.
“I know soccer has always been really important in her life,” Makade said. “Now she’s talking about pushing herself and maybe going pro. When we had the babies, I didn’t ever want her to give up on her dreams. I didn’t want her to think she couldn’t do both.”
The two returned to Bakersfield in January 2018 to finish Jensen’s freshman year. Balancing newborn twins ate up a lot of time. But with soccer in season, their schedules stretch the imagination.
Jensen balances a full class schedule with the training regimen of a Division I athlete, starting the day at 6 a.m. She often doesn’t get home until after 8 p.m., when the boys have gone to bed.
“I usually have to sneak into their room and retuck them in, just to see them for a little bit,” Jensen said.
Bakersfield’s away schedule requires four-day weekends, leaving Makade alone with the boys while he juggles his own classes and an engineering internship. The couple also added Daxx, a sixth-month-old Siberian husky/black lab mix, to the equation.
“We were joking around that having two twins and going to school got too easy,” Makade said. “Everyone we talk to thinks we’re crazy. But now he’s part of the family.”
Jensen fully credits her husband with making all of it possible. He jumps to get up with the boys at night and make sure they get to day care on time.
Jensen was already an energetic and driven student, earning her nursing certificate in high school. But she’s had to find another gear to juggle it all.
“I’ve just had to learn how to prioritize,” she said. “I know when it’s school time, I need to be doing school time. Because if I don’t do it then, then it takes into my family time. And I don’t want that.”