Shelby Osborne: Female Football Player Signs With College Team To Play Defensive Back

Shelby Osborne is breaking new football ground after the high school standout became the first woman to join a college team as a defensive back.

Osborne joins a club of less than a dozen women to play college football on a men’s team after signing a letter of intent to play for NAIA Campbellsville University in Kentucky. To date no other female player has made a college team as a cornerback, a position that calls for a high degree of speed and athleticism.

Shelby’s high school coach, Lonnie Oldham, said he warned her that playing at the college level will be difficult.

“You don’t want to shoot anybody’s dreams down but I had a conversation with Shelby and I said, ‘Shelby it’s going to be really tough for you to find anybody to take you,’ ” Oldham said.

Shelby Osborne said she is ready to take on the challenge, and gets her determination from her mother.

“My mom was the same way when she was my age,” Osborne told The Courier Journal. “She wanted to work on cars, and her dad wouldn’t let her. She knew I’d do anything I could to achieve my dreams.”

And Shelby certainly did a lot to follow her dream. She wrote to every college in Kentucky as well as schools in Florida and North Carolina, but said most coaches didn’t even bother responding.

But after showing up to an open recruiting day at Campbellsville, Osborne won over the coaching staff.

Osborne is not the first female football player to make waves this year. In February, Jen Welter suited up at running back for the Texas Revolution, becoming the first female non-kicker the play professional football.

Shelby Osborne said her football dreams are more realistic. The cornerback told ESPN, “I could care less if I ever played a down, as long as I am a part of the team… and continue with my love and passion for football….The team before myself…. Wherever God puts me, I’m totally OK with it.”