National Signing Day might be way off in the rearview mirror, but one Jeffersonville High School cornerback from Lafayette, Ind., decided to make things official by signing with NAIA school Campbellsville on Wednesday.
In doing so, Shelby Osborne made history -- she's the first female college football player to play a position other than kicker.
The 5-foot-6, 140-pound Osborne played a number of sports at Jeffersonville High, but made her way to the junior varsity football team in the middle of her junior year. Osborne saw sporadic playing time on the field, but still wanted to continue with the sport in college and began writing and calling coaches all over the country to see if they had an opportunity for her.
"I'd wake up for 4 a.m. runs and stay at school until 8 p.m. working with the coaches," Osborne told The Courier-Journal of Louisville. "I worked throughout the whole year, fell in love with the game and didn't want to give it up. When the season ended, I was desperate to find anyone who would take me and continue on the thing that captured my heart."
Despite a lack of response from most schools, Osborne attended an open tryout at Campbellsville -- the coach there was an acquaintance of her high school coach. She didn't take no for an answer, and the relationship between the two coaches seemed to seal the deal in Osborne making college football history.
"It was something I wanted to do, and I went out and achieved it," she said, per The Courier-Journal. "But now I have girls coming to me asking for help. It doesn't just apply to football -- just anything they don't see as a possibility because there are certain professions viewed as male professions that they could go into that they might not have thought about."
Osborne won't have a full-ride scholarship, but there's plenty of value in the opportunity to be a trailblazer in college football and continue a dream.
*Follow Bryan Fischer on Twitter **@BryanDFischer.*
