Bill Lloyd was in desperate need of a leader for the Bordentown High School girls’ basketball team this year, and he fortunately had the absolute right person to fill the role.
Senior Oshynn Cosom wants to help people. She wants to go into law enforcement with a long-range goal of being a homicide detective. She is currently serving an internship with the Bordentown Township Police Department in order to get a jump on things, and has gained a wealth of information during her time there..
She signed up for a BTHS elective for community service and was chosen. Thus, Oshynn goes to Peter Muschal Elementary School to help youngsters learn how to read and understand how to pronounce certain words. She also works with youngsters at Team 85 training center.
“I’m around kids all week,” she said. “I really enjoy being around the kids, they make the day go by faster.”
She needed that mindset this year for the Scotties basketball team, as Cosom was the lone player with experience returning to the fold, and one of just two seniors on the roster.
Cosom’s main sport is soccer. She is coming off a fall season in which she was second on the team with 10 goals, and is headed to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania to play on the pitch.
Oshynn was planning on just enjoying her senior year of basketball until being given a huge responsibility.
“I felt bad for her this year; we had such a young team,” Lloyd said. “We had pretty much her and no varsity experience around her. I asked her to take on that role, and that’s tough because she had expectations of her senior year, and I don’t think it included taking on that leadership role and understanding that we were going to go through bumps in the road. She’s been awesome with it. I asked her the other day how she’s been this year; she said, ‘I’m having fun.’
“The most important thing is she accepted that we, as a team, were going to go through growing pains and she was a part of it. So she was a leader of the team. She had to be the leader.”
Cosom admitted it took some time to adapt to that role, but she stuck with it and made it happen.
“My initial thought going into the season is I was very disappointed we weren’t going to have our starting lineup back,” she said. “But gradually, as the season went on and we progressed, I started to get a better outlook on how the season’s going.
“To be honest, our progression has really made me proud as a senior captain, with the team coming together and everyone improving skill-wise and working together as a team. I think that kind of proved everyone else wrong who doubted us at the beginning of the season.”
Despite six freshmen, two sophomores and four juniors on the roster, Bordentown was 7-11 entering its Feb. 23 game with Paulsboro. The Scotties qualified for the state tournament and opened at New Providence on Feb. 28. While that record might not seem impressive, it is better than what anyone was expecting.
Leading the way was Cosom with a 13.3 scoring average, which didn’t come easy as the lifetime guard was put in an unenviable position.
“She used to play the front of the defense, she’d get steals for us, get those runout points,” Lloyd said. “She also shoots the three well. This year, we’ve had to put her down low in the defensive position, the rebounding position.”
At 5-foot-3, that’s not an easy spot.
“She’s one of our tougher girls, and I’m asking her to do something that’s not part of her game,” Lloyd said. “She’s been banging with the bigger girls down there, she’s rebounding for us, she’s talking on defense from the back of the zone. I’ve asked her to do more than she did in her first three years.”
And she has done it without question.
“Those are the players you like to coach,” Lloyd said. “The ones where you say ‘I’m asking you to do something that is not in your game,’ and she’s still doing that pretty well.”
When first given the assignment, Cosom was obviously concerned. But she’s a competitor, and she just had to compete harder than ever before.
“At first I thought it was gonna be hard because I’m pretty short, and there’s other girls that are 5-7, 5-8,” Cosom said. “I figured if I play the way I play and keep being aggressive, I can put up a fight down there. I’m actually shocked myself that I’m able to get some rebounds over some big girls and help us get the ball and push it down the floor.”
It is a true testament to Cosom’s character that she has taken on so much new responsibility in what was supposed to just be a fun final season of high school sports. Make no mistake, she is having fun, but she had to work at it.
“Those are the conversations I had with her as a coach,” Lloyd said. “I told her ‘Listen, not everything in life is going to go the way you planned it. How you face those adversities tells you more about yourself.’ Those are the conversations I had with her early in the year, and she’s been willing to accept it and thrive in it. It says everything about her.”
Cosom has been playing soccer and basketball since she was a little kid. And while Oshynn enjoys basketball, she fell in love with soccer and devoted more time to that. She admits to wondering how much better she would be if she spent more time on hoops, but the fact she will play soccer in college proves she chose the right sport.
And although the basketball team has a losing record, Bordentown’s 2021 Homecoming Queen couldn’t be happier with how things have progressed.
“What I like about this season is just the team bonding and how we work together,” Cosom said. “Out of all my three years of playing on the team I feel like this last year this is the most bonded team I’ve ever been on for basketball. Since we bond so well I really enjoy it with the girls. The chemistry we have off the court reflects on the court, that helps a lot.”
And stirring it all up to make that formula just right has been Oshynn Cosom.
Senior Oshynn Cosom has led the Bordentown High Scotties with a 13.3 points-per-game average in 2022. (Photo by Rich Fisher.),
