ROSSVILLE – McCutcheon senior Sydney Osborn couldn’t help but yell at the top of her lungs as she rounded the bases Friday evening.
It wasn’t that Osborn had hammered a grand slam against an elite pitcher in Rossville senior and Virginia Tech signee Avery Layton.
She could pour out the emotions pent up in her after a car crash could’ve ended her life 11 months ago.
“I shouldn’t be here,” Osborn said. “But I had angels with me.”
Osborn had crashed the front end of her vehicle, a GMC Terrain into a phone pole while traveling 60 miles per hour on North River Road in West Lafayette on May 10.
“The whole phone line was down in the middle of the road,” Osborn said.
Her car was totaled and Osborn was left with a serious but non-life threatening concussion.
Osborn was aided by a stranger, an electrician who could properly access the car before assisting her safely from the vehicle and wait for paramedics and her parents to arrive.
The Mavericks catcher was on her way to watch her school’s Unified Track and Field team compete in the IHSAA state tournament in Bloomington. Paramedics got the poster she had made for the event out of the car and Osborn made it to Bloomington.
“It was such a blessing to be able to walk away and to be able to support people I have a new appreciation for,” Osborn said.
The concussion sustained by Osborn forced her to miss her entire summer club season with the Indiana Magic. Being injured, she wanted to help her team.
That’s when she was given an idea by her mother LeAnn and father Dwayne who do photography as a hobby.
Grab a camera, take pictures and encapsulate memories that she had nearly been robbed of.
“I loved being able to capture the moments of my teammates,” Osborn said. “I did and it stuck and I started doing it for high school and capture the final moments of their senior seasons. As we’ve gone through the year, it’s been a blessing to be able to capture that.”
Ethan Hanson is the sports reporter for the Journal & Courier in Lafayette. He can be reached at ehanson@jconline.com, on Twitter at EthanAHanson and Instagram at ethan_a_hanson.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier:
Topics in this Story
