Freshman Gets Back Into Motocross After Leg Injury

It was a cool, windy Saturday night in Colombia, MO last November when freshman Jake Hansford and his friends finished up an intense motocross practice, and decided to have some extra fun on their bikes.

Hansford was jumping off of a ramp and performing mid-air tricks when something went wrong.

He botched the landing, and within a split-second, he thrown from his bike and onto the ground. He tumbled down the landing ramp, and felt a jolting sensation coming up his leg. When he finished rolling, he could feel the rough dirt against his back. He looked down to the location of his pain, and saw his leg, broken in half.
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Hansford got into motocross in fourth grade with a friend from SM Northwest, Aaron Okrzesik. They both had gotten lower-level bikes for fun, and would speed up and down the neighborhood streets racing each other. After a few weeks, they got bored with their street, and wanted to actually try legitimate racing, on real dirt tracks. Soon after, Okrzesik’s parent took them out to a track in Perry Lake, MO. This is where Hansford fell in love with the sport.

He rode on his lower-level ‘pit bike’ for one month before his mother bought him a race bike as a gift.

“One day when I went over to a friend’s house, my friend raised his garage door and there was a new racing bike sitting there. I said, ‘Oh, cool man…you got another bike.’ And my friend said, ‘It’s yours,’” Hansford said. “I guess my mom and his dad had gone and picked one out for me earlier that day as a present.”

Motocross became Hansford’s main pastime, and later that year, he started competing in the Missouri state championship series. On Friday nights, he and his family would drive a while out to a track and spend the night with the other families, camping out in the crisp Midwestern air, telling stories and roasting marshmallows around a bonfire. Then, in the morning, all of the participants would unload their hulking trailers and the kids would race throughout the morning.

Hansford did this for the next four years and motocross became his life. The accident changed everything.

It was his last jump of the day, and he planned on doing one more jump before he headed home. He and the other riders were competing in a playful “biggest whip” competition, similar to the popular long, trick-filled jumps seen on the X Games. The rider would do tricks by turning the bike sideways or flicking the tail out as far as possible, then straighten out and land before touching down on the other side.

Hansford was tired from the long day of practice and got lazy when correcting the landing. At the end of the jump, he didn’t straighten the bike back as far as he needed to, and was launched at the ground sideways, bouncing and somersaulting down the other side of the dirt landing pad. His bike flew from his grasp and during the flipping, his leg hit the ground at high speed at an awkward angle, and it broke.

“I kinda felt my leg break, and I flipped for so long that I had time to think ‘Why am I still flipping?’” Hansford said.

Having broken his ribs, elbow, wrist, puncturing one of his lungs and receiving countless concussions before, Hansford was no stranger to pain.

After he came to a stop on the dirt, his dad rushed over and asked if he was all right. Hansford simply replied:

“Well, my leg’s broke.”

The break was obvious to see, because the bottom half of his leg dangled at an awkward angle from the rest of his knee. After an hour or so, they went to the hospital and got an x-ray. It turned out that he had broken his tibia and fibula in half, and he couldn’t leave the hospital for the next four days.

Hansford wasn’t able to get out of his bed much for the first month, and had to stay at home most of the time when he wasn’t at school. His mobility was very limited.

“My mom and dad didn’t even let me go up the stairs at my house, so I had to stay on the ground floor,” he said.

Hansford’s parents thought he might not be able to walk again because of how messy the break was. The doctors were unsure about how things would turn out.

In a surgical procedure to correct the damage the break had done, doctors inserted a metal plate with seven screws into his leg. He recovered quickly, and was given a six month recovery time that after he could return back to motocross.

Through this whole time, his parents had mixed feelings.

His father thought he was exaggerating.

“It can’t be that bad,” he’d say, “You should be fine.”

His mother, on the other hand, asked “Okay, so are you ready to quit now?”

Both of his parents have been extremely supportive throughout his career, they just showed it differently.

“My mom was trying to keep me off my bike, while my dad was trying to keep me on my bike,” Hansford said.

When there was a week or so left, he hadn’t been in very much pain, and decided to go out riding. He was happy to be back doing what he loved, but his enjoyment was short-lived.

That day, he took a ramp with too much speed and overshot the landing, causing him to slam into the ground. When this happened, one of the seven screws created a hairline fracture in his leg.

“It hurt worse than the first time,” Hansford said, “I couldn’t hold my leg out straight because it felt like it was going to snap off.”

He was given another six month recovery period, and this time he didn’t ride early, in fear of worsening his injury even further.

He hasn’t raced since he got the plate removed, and is eager to get back into the danger of the sport he loves.

“The speed, the jumps, the thrill of the race, winning,” Hansford said, “That’s what makes riding worth the risk.”

Six months from his last accident, Hansford is ready to get back to motocross. To prepare for the next season in May, Hansford is planning on taking time practicing down in Texas and Oklahoma to get back into the swing of things. But more important than the opportunity to compete, he’s just happy he gets to ride again.
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Footage of Jake Hansford on the motorcross track.