When she hears the words, “On guard. Ready. Fence,” Shelby Jensen isn’t thinking about the potentially deadly stroke that inflicted permanent injury upon her at the tender age of seven. Rather, she’s focused on winning, which she has done consistently in recent years, propelling her to the highest echelons of wheelchair fencing in the world.
Now, Shelby, 20, a student at Salt Lake Community College, is headed to Tokyo for the Paralympic Games that begin Aug. 24. “I’m so overjoyed,” she says. “After all the hard work I put in, it finally paid off.”
The long road to this major accomplishment really began when a normally bubbly second grader at William Penn Elementary started acting tired and confused during her dual immersion Spanish class.
Shelby suddenly told her teacher, “I miss my mommy.” The teacher was concerned. The bus driver to daycare after school sensed something was off with Shelby. “I didn’t want to talk to anyone,” she recalls. Later that day, her parents, Sheri and Jed Jensen, noticed how the right side of her face started to droop, but they thought it might be related to a recent lost tooth. Her mom even joked, “’What did you do, go and have a stroke?’” Shelby says. During homework she tried to write the number 8 but could only muster a 4. “I kept saying to my mother, ‘My memory is going. It’s not there – it’s fuzzy.’” This was no joke. A few worry-filled phone calls later, and they were on the way to the ER.
The short version of what came next is this – many doctors gathered and ultimately stressed the urgency of getting Shelby into surgery right away. Tests showed she had a stroke – an aneurism in her brain – and waiting any longer might have cost Shelby her life. She had a 70 percent chance of surviving the operation to correct the aneurism. Doctors warned she almost certainly would have problems afterward – and she did. Paralyzed on her right side, Shelby spent about three weeks in the hospital before transferring to patient rehab, which turned into months of learning how to walk, talk, swallow, write with her left hand and more.
Now she walked different. She wore a brace – still does – on her right leg. Her right arm was limp and weak. The fingers on her right “helper hand” were closed, and she still can’t grasp things with it. She eventually went back to school. Kids made fun of her. She was bullied. Today Shelby says she has moved past all of that, chalking it up to kids being mean. Her parents put her in sports as soon as they could. Softball. Baseball. Biking. Archery. When she was 15 and volunteering at a sports camp for people with disabilities, someone told her to try wheelchair fencing. That was the spark she needed. “I absolutely fell in love with it,” she says.
Her sport does not require Shelby to be a wheelchair user. Her disability, however, does allow her to compete in wheelchair fencing. The athletes sit in a wheelchair, which is then attached to a frame to keep the chair stationary during competition. Points are scored through an electronic sensor at the tip of each weapon – the saber, foil and epee. “I get in the zone when I’m competing,” Shelby says. “With the saber, it’s aggressive and go, go, go. In foil and epee, I’m more relaxed and strategic.”
Shelby started winning. When her classmates at Olympus High were in school, she studied overseas during breaks in competition – Poland, Japan, Dubai, Italy, Brazil, Netherlands, South Korea, Hungary, to name a few. “Wheelchair fencing has opened more doors than I think would have if I was able bodied,” she says, noting the silver lining to it all. “Doing a sport means everything to me, along with being with like-minded individuals with other disabilities. Being able to see what we, what they can do – it’s amazing.”
Although she’s already planning on competing in the next two Paralympics in Italy in 2024 and then Los Angeles in 2028 – she’s currently the youngest Paralympic athlete in her category – Shelby is looking beyond sport. After she graduated from Olympus in 2019, she began taking classes at SLCC that fall. The college’s online offerings fit in with Shelby’s busy schedule that balances training, travel, work and competition. She expects to graduate from SLCC in the spring of 2022, and then pursue a bachelor’s degree, probably in nutrition.
Shelby’s dream job is to be a sports nutritionist for athletes, maybe Olympians or Paralympians. She’s also interested in being a recreational therapist, which would be a continuation of her current job working for Salt Lake County Parks & Recreation in their adaptive sports program.
When the Games begin Aug. 24, Shelby’s parents will be glued to the TV at a facility in Colorado set up for friends and family – because of the pandemic, fans are not allowed to watch athletes in person.
Shelby’s parents have a lot emotionally invested in their only child. Jed loves gushing about his daughter. He also invented a new type of chair/frame combo that he hopes Paralympic officials will consider using.
Standing next to each other, Jed suddenly points to the arc of a scar still visible in a shaved portion of Shelby’s head from when doctors operated on her 13 years ago. He wants to talk about that painful time in their lives, but he can’t find the words. He steps back several feet, fighting back tears. All he can manage to say is, “It still gets to me.” Shelby gives him a hug.
More on Shelby
Before qualifying for the Paralympics, Shelby was ranked 15th in the world in saber, 18th in epee and 22nd in foil. She will compete in two individual competitions and two team competitions in Tokyo next month. Shelby is expected to compete in USA Fencing's July Challenge and Parafencing National Championships July 22-25 at The Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City. For more information, click here.
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