Imagine coming back to high school after taking a year off to find all of your friends a year older and ready to graduate.
Jake Mortensen, now a junior, should have been graduating this spring, along with those friends but an elbow injury took Mortensen out of the 2011-2012 school year.
“I was doing these workouts [for football], and I put a lot of stress of my elbow.” Mortensen said, “I had a dead bone cart on my elbow.” Mortensen was required to attend physical therapy and the doctor had given him the all clear [to play again]. His elbow was fine throughout sophomore year, but over the summer it popped again, from doing pull ups.
At that point, Mortensen knew he would not be able to play for any teams, his junior year, so it was decided he would take a year off.
Mortensen is part of the varsity football and basketball teams. When Mortensen got the news that his elbow injury would take him out of the game for an entire season, he made the decision to stay out of school for a year.
“I didn’t want to miss a year because that would have kept me out of the game,” Mortensen said. If Mortensen had taken a year away from sports, because of injury, he would not have made the varsity team.
Although taking a year off school has helped him in the game, he still has relatively the same grades.
“Taking a year off hasn’t really helped or hurt my grades…they are about the same,” Mortensen said. His grades are staying the same, which allows him to continue playing for the football and basketball teams.
His performance for each team has only gotten better because he has had a year to recuperate and practice for the field and court. He has had more of an opportunity to better himself as a player than most of the students, on the team, have had. Mortensen is now ready to compete in the teams again.
With Mortensen taking a year away from school, he has had time worked on a strategy and practiced his game play; his plan of attack.
Although Mortensen’s senior friends are graduating this year, and he will not be, he has noticed that this move has helped him in many ways. Mortensen is now more mature and is much more advanced.
“I have noticed that taking a year off [from school], has advanced me and I am a lot more mature than I would have been.”
Mortensen does find it weird that he will be one of the only students that will get to stay a year more than his fellow peers but it has helped him and he is glad with the decision he made.