By Becca Jolly, Harding Charter Prep, Oklahoma City
Jensen Mckey is a person of many interests. Despite being homeschooled, the 17-year-old has a booming social life between soccer, an aspiring career in media and being a referee.
Jensen was homeschooled until second grade and then again since sixth grade. She was pulled out due to threats being made to her school in Harrah, Oklahoma. Since then Jensen has continued attending classes online through Epic Charter Schools, where her mom is a teacher.
Going through a change like this is hard, especially for younger people. After leaving public school for online, Jensen and her friends became distant from one another.
Despite these challenges, Jensen didn’t stop doing what she loved.
At 12, she started playing soccer for her brother’s team after having a player shortage. Jensen fell in love with the sport and has been playing for school and club teams ever since. She normally plays center defense.
Now, she is starting to play for her new teams, the Norman Celtics and the Choctaw Rouge.
Jensen even played on a high school boys team but switched to a girls team where she still plays today.
She is passionate about soccer and wants to make sure her teammates play safe.
“There’s a difference between playing with full force and playing to injure,” she said. “I’m fine with going full force, it’s when people go to injure that bothers me.”
In addition to playing soccer, Jensen also loves to be a referee. She referees for kids from ages 4 to 19.
“I love reffing with kids because they are just there to have fun and kick a ball around.”
Jensen says it’s harder to be a referee for older kids.
“Some parents think that their kid is perfect, when they aren’t,” she said. Sometimes parents get mad when things aren’t going the way they want.
While Jensen runs the soccer fields, she is also busy running her school’s media program.
As a junior at Epic, she writes scripts for newscasts, runs the teleprompter and sets up cameras. She even anchors and had her own crime segment.
“I was this teeny tiny 8th grader talking about the week’s murder list.”
Initially, Jensen didn’t know Epic had a media program. She said the school system is so big she was missing out on so many different programs.
“At first I had no interest in the media,” she said. Her mom made her join the program because other kids were afraid to. Now Jensen practically runs it. She is now the main anchor for her school’s news cast, Epic News Network.
After being in her school’s media program, Jensen was recommended OIDJ by one of her teachers. She has been coming back every summer since 2021.
Jensen has plans to pursue media in college despite financial struggles. Right now, she is doing concurrent classes to graduate with a general associate’s degree. She is hoping to earn scholarships.
“I either have to pay for college straight out, or not go at all; I refuse to go into debt.”
Jensen is torn between majoring in creative media or advertising. While working her summer job selling fireworks, she learned she is great at getting people to buy things.
“You really have to understand how people work to sell to them,” she said.
