Esperanza record-holding thrower Bronson Osborn might not be able to compete this coming season because of a shoulder injury that required surgery.
Esperanza throws coach Bill Pendleton said Osborn, a senior, was completing a bench press Saturday when Osborn felt something pop. Surgery performed earlier this week reattached Osborn’s left pectoral muscle to a tendon.
Osborn throws right-handed but the opposite arm is essential to technique — motion, leverage and follow-through — for a thrower.
Osborn has won two CIF-Southern Section and two CIF State championships. He has the Orange County record in the shot put at 71-07.25 and is among county’s all-time leaders in the discus.
Osborn won a bronze medal this past summer at the IAAF World Under-20 Track & Field Championships in Bydgoszcz, Poland.
It would require a rapid comeback for Osborn to compete this season, which ends with the CIF State meet in early June. To qualify for that, though, he would have to qualify through a series of meets that would include the Crestview League championships, the CIF-SS meet and the CIF-SS Masters Meet in May.
Pendleton is confident that Osborn, who signed with UCLA, will be good to go for his freshman year with the Bruins because Dutch Olympic thrower Rutger Smith had the same injury.
“(Smith) did the same thing at the same age as Bronson,” Pendleton said, “and he threw his personal best 11 months later.”
Smith went on to become the first thrower to win medals in the shot put and the discus in the World Championships.
