Jason Jensen didn’t think he needed a helmet.

The goalie coach for Holy Family Catholic High School in Victoria had played Division I hockey and spent much of his life on skates.

When the girls team began practice Jan. 31, Jensen anticipated a short but fun session, followed by a dinner date with his wife, Kelly.

“The great thing about life is you always get humbled pretty quick when you start to think you’re a big deal,” Jensen said.

Less than two minutes into practice, Jensen was in the goal crease, talking, when a player slipped and fell into him. He lost balance and slammed his head to the ice.

“He had blood bubbling out of his ear,” Holy Family head coach Randy Koeppl said. “There are certain images that will never leave my mind.”

The near-tragedy rekindled a debate over whether helmets should be mandatory at practice for high school hockey coaches. For now, they are not.

Lakeville girls hockey coach Buck Kochevar and former Gophers star Mike Crowley are among those who have had “wake-up calls” without helmets while coaching.

“I wish the [state] high school league would just say, ‘You gotta do it,’ ” Koeppl said. “I mean, this is gonna happen again this year, I guarantee it. Maybe not to this extent, but somebody’s gonna fall, get tripped and drill their head.”

Jensen, 44, has spent the past nine months recovering, including seven surgeries and special therapy to regulate his emotions. He said he feels about 95% to 96% recovered and has been coaching since girls hockey practice started Oct. 27.

His primary job is with the Lakeville Police Department, where he’s a lieutenant overseeing investigations. He’s a former Minnesota State Mankato goalie who also serves as goalie coach for the Holy Family and Chanhassen boys teams.

Since that fateful practice at Victoria Recreation Center, Holy Family, Chanhassen, Edina, Minnetonka and East Ridge are among the schools with new mandates that high school coaches wear helmets for practice.

“While wearing a helmet probably wouldn’t have prevented an injury,” Jensen said, “it definitely would have minimized the extent of my injuries.”

No consensus

Minnesota Hockey, which oversees the state’s robust youth program — but not high schools — began requiring helmets for its 8,000 coaches in 2006.

When that rule took effect, coaches were motivated, in part, by tragedy. Wes Barrette, a popular St. Paul youth hockey coach, died in 1998 at age 70 after hitting his head on the ice when he wasn’t wearing a helmet.

Back then, former Gophers and North Stars player Tom Younghans said: “It’s not that I’m against a helmet. But we are adults and we should take personal responsibility. … I want to have the right to make that decision.”

In 2018, USA Hockey went a step further, imposing a 30-day suspension for a coach at practice with no helmet.

“I should eat a little crow,” Jensen said. “When it was first mandated by USA Hockey, I didn’t feel the need for it. I’d skated for years, and it wasn’t a big deal.”

The Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) and the National Federation of High School Associations (NFHS) recommend but don’t require high school coaches to wear helmets.

That’s partly because of jurisdiction. The NFHS writes rules for varsity competition — not rules for practice or coaches equipment. The same goes for the MSHSL.

Last year, hockey organizations quickly began requiring players to wear neck protection after the 2023 death of former Minnesota Duluth player Adam Johnson, who took a skate blade to the neck. The NFHS adopted that rule for games, but neck guards still aren’t mandatory for high school practice.

Another example: Major League Baseball and the NCAA require first base and third base coaches to wear protective helmets, but there is no such rule for Minnesota high school coaches. Again, it’s up to the schools.

Bob Madison, senior associate director for the MSHSL, said the league works closely with the coaches associations. If strong support emerged from coaches to make helmets mandatory, the MSHSL would look at that.

After Jensen’s injury, “there was obviously momentum around helmets for coaches at the time,” Madison said. “But there’s a real mixed opinion, I would say, from the coaches association.”

Dustin Vogelgesang, executive director of the state’s coaches association, said the helmet issue was discussed last spring, but there was no vote.

“We are highly recommending all of our coaches wear helmets for practice,” he said.

Vogelgesang took it further at East Ridge, where he coaches boys hockey, mandating that his coaches wear helmets.

After her husband’s fall, Kelly Jensen sent a letter to the MSHSL, making her case.

“My hope is that I could find somebody to tell my story,” she said. “I’m not trying to be difficult, and I don’t want to preach, but if we can get five months back from [Jensen’s] life, we would do it in a heartbeat.”

‘A freak accident’

Jason and Kelly Jensen were high school sweethearts in Rosemount and have two kids — Noah (ninth grade) and Olivia (fourth).

“The best thing I ever did was I tricked a beautiful, intelligent, smart woman to marry me,” Jason said.

Kelly arrived to find Jason in critical condition Jan. 31 at Hennepin County Medical Center. There, he had emergency surgery to remove part of his skull to relieve swelling and bleeding in the brain.

Within 48 hours, Kelly was on FaceTime assuring players and families.

“I just let them know there’s nobody at fault,” she said. “This was a freak accident, and that if I can support them in any way, I will.”

The GoFundMe started to raise money for the Jensen family gathered $122,882. Eventually, Jason would spend six weeks at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, a rehab hospital in Chicago, and about 10 weeks at QLI Omaha, a rehab center in Nebraska.

“In the hospital at HCMC, I was told, basically, he’ll never be the same again,” Kelly said. “That’s obviously something that you don’t ever want to hear. And so I prepared myself for the worst, and I’m so thankful for the doctors working to get him back.”

In Kelly’s view, Jason is closer to 98% recovered, higher than his own assessment.

“He still has his humor,” she said. “He still has his ability to be compassionate, and conversation is very easy for him.”

But there were moments in the process when Jason would get agitated, too.

“At first it was a little alarming,” Kelly said, “just because his moods, his attitude — he was not the Jason that we’re used to.”

That led to the decision to send him to QLI Omaha.

“There was such extensive damage to my frontal lobe that I struggled with emotional regulation,” he said. “I owed it to the kids to have positive, fun interactions with them and didn’t want them worried if Dad was going to be crabby.”

Jason returned from Omaha in July and was back to work at the police department full-time by August.

Helmet believers

Crowley, a two-time Hobey Baker Award finalist for the Gophers, turned 50 this summer.

“He’s one of the best skaters ever to play in Minnesota,” Koeppl said. “This guy is still in great shape, and he wears a helmet any time he goes on the ice.”

Two years ago, Crowley wasn’t wearing a helmet when he was helping coach Holy Family’s boys team. At one point, he joined the players in a high-speed skating drill around the faceoff dots.

“I lost an edge and went into the boards pretty hard,” said Crowley, who suffered broken ribs and a heavily bruised shoulder. “If I hit my head, there would have been a problem. I started wearing a helmet after that, just because it was a wake-up call for me.”

Kochevar, 59, suffered his accident on Valentine’s Day 2011.

An Eveleth, Minn., native, he remembers having two drills he wanted to show his players that day. He demonstrated for the team and was going full speed, “when I turned from forward to backwards and hit a rut in the ice. I flew I’d say 8 to 10 feet and then hit my head.

“I was out instantly, but I was lucky. Basically, I still can’t smell or taste, but I’m standing vertical.”

You won’t find him without a helmet at practice now. The same goes for Gophers coach Bob Motzko, 64, who has been wearing a helmet at practices the past three seasons.

“I don’t move like I used to,” Motzko quipped last winter. “I know it looks like it, but I don’t.”

For ‘your loved ones’

Soon after Jason Jensen’s accident, Edina High activities director Troy Stein went to his head hockey coaches — Curt Giles and Sami Cowger — seeking their opinion about a helmet mandate.

Turned out, in that short span of time, Giles, 66, had already started wearing a helmet. So, it was just a matter of convincing the rest of the coaching staff.

“Hockey is a unique culture, right?” said Stein, whose four kids all play youth hockey. “I’ve talked to coaches that have said, ‘There’s no way I’m going to wear one.’ ”

Without a statewide or national mandate, this will remain up to individual schools.

“I would just encourage all schools to look at this,” Stein said, “just like Minnesota Hockey has looked at this [for youth hockey] and said, ‘This is the right thing to do.’ ”

If any of Edina’s coaches were reluctant, Stein had one more message.

“I told them, ‘I want to make sure that you’re going home to your families and your loved ones,’ ” he said. “And they agreed. I mean, everybody was like, ‘Yeah, makes sense.’ ”