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as a dancer suddenly looked shaky, her friends and teammates refused to give up on her.

The day after the accident, King called the drill team’s second in command, Sophia Landers.

“The first thing [Landers] said to me was, ‘I don’t want to be captain. Jenn is our captain,’” King recalls.

“That told me in an instant how much [Macias’] team admired her. The admiration her team had for her made me realize that, no matter what happened, the girls would not have it any other way: She would always be our captain, whether she pulled through or not.”

Macias hadn’t recovered by the time football season arrived, so her spot at the 50-yard line remained empty.

At every game, the announcers introduced the officers, and when they announced Macias, they dedicated the halftime performance to their “fearless captain,” and always ended with, “We kick for you, Jenn.”

Watching recordings of the halftime shows was bittersweet for Macias.

“That was really nice of them, but it was sad and it was hard,” she explains, “because I was in a hospital bed. I couldn’t be with them on Friday nights, on my last year.”

It wasn’t until Macias was released from the hospital, bound to a wheelchair for long distances and a walker for short distances, that the emotions really hit her hard.

“I missed being home, but it hit me how much had changed,” she says. “It was weird. It felt so good being home. It felt like everything was normal, but it wasn’t. I would stay up late most nights. I would go on YouTube and watch old videos of me dancing. It made me more sad, but it felt good seeing it and crying.”

King made it clear Macias was still a part of the Woodrow dance program and put Macias to work helping a group of students with their choreography for “The Nutcracker.”

“It felt nice to be back, yet at the same time it was painful seeing them,” she explains.

Macias was slowly but steadily recovering, but she still felt like she had to cut out dance and completely rethink her future.

“Before [dance] I wanted to go into education,” she points out. “I like teaching, so I thought, ‘OK, maybe I can go into education.’”

When Macias went to King for advice, she was encouraged not to give up on dance.

King had also been in a near-fatal accident just a few weeks after she graduated