Preston Edwards loved basketball. LOVED basketball. It was far from the only thing in his life that he loved – more about that, soon enough – but “PeeDee” was the personification of a hoops junkie.
He didn’t just watch it. And he watched a lot of it, the vast majority in person, in gyms all around Shreveport-Bossier, all around the area, all around the state. Around the calendar, around the clock. Breakfast to midnight at summer camps and AAU tournaments.
Preston LIVED it. Basketball was a passion, and it was also for him, a mission, an opportunity to brighten lives through sharing stories about the games, the players, the coaches, and through enhancing lives by promoting those players and lifting them up – maybe just to help them feel good about themselves, and sometimes to open a pathway to using the game to get to college.
He wasn’t an agent, he wasn’t a salesman, he wasn’t a broker figuring NIL valuations. Preston was just a good man, sharing good words about good kids, doing what he could to help, as a lover of hoops, a self-made scribe of the game.
He was the high school basketball columnist and a contributor for the Shreveport-Bossier Journal since it launched three basketball seasons ago. By then he had covered prep hoops and summer ball for many years, on his social media platforms, at Prep Hoops Louisiana, and elsewhere. Anywhere he could, really. And get this, until he joined the SBJ crew, it was all on his own dime. Out of love for the game and its people.
It continued into May on his @peedee1906 account on X, almost until he passed and was laid to rest last Saturday afternoon as a couple hundred friends gathered at Lincoln Memorial Park for one final celebration of a beautiful 50 years of life. Preston played with four fouls the last year and change, going overtime in a back-and-forth battle with cancer. Several lead changes, some undeniably heroic comebacks. But the clock finally ran out on May 9.
He would like that description – that’s how much Preston Edwards loved basketball.
Considering that, here’s one stunning fact about the man, courtesy of his dear pal Paul Marshall, one of the greatest players in local hoops history, like Preston a proud graduate of Southwood High School.
Said Paul: “I don’t remember him dribbling a basketball. If he did, it was intramurals in college, or maybe in junior high. He never played high school ball, but he sure knew the game.”
When Southwood retired Marshall’s jersey last February, he could have chosen a coach or a teammate to introduce him at the ceremony. But he asked Preston, two years younger, to speak. The reaction?
“He thought I was pulling a prank on him. He thought I was joking. But I couldn’t think of anyone else who knew my story better. I said, ‘Man, it would be my honor.’ He said, ‘No, I would be my honor.’ That’s one of my fondest memories, how humble he was.”
He played any role he could to foster the game. He was part of scoretable crews for many seasons at all of the local colleges – Centenary, Bossier Parish CC, Southern-Shreveport, and LSUS. Colleague Lee Hiller noted Preston could run the game clock, operate the scoreboard, keep the scorebook – whatever was needed.
He even stepped into coaching, in summer ball, for a while. His team, Excaliber, won a couple tournaments, recalled his former wife and life partner, Maria Edwards – a fellow educator.
They met when he was a young social studies teacher at Southwood, and she was a student teacher. They were married for 18 years and lovingly shared two kids, her daughter Amber (32, expecting their first grandchild in August) and his son Andre (25).
“He never met a person he couldn’t strike up a conversation with,” Maria recalled, “but he was a little shy when he first met me. It was OK, though. We ended up together.”
The marriage eventually ended, but the relationship shifted not too much. “We remained friends,” she said, noting in the obituary, she and Amber settled on describing her as “lifelong friend and former spouse.”
“We just had a beautifully blended family, son and daughter. We didn’t like the designation of stepchildren. They were our children,” said Maria. “He loved his kids. They were his pride and joy. When Amber called, ‘Best Daughter Ever’ popped up on his phone.”
Andre (‘Dre) became a pretty avid junior tennis player. Of course Dad provided every opportunity, made every trip, did all he could to support, and ‘Dre got a partial scholarship to Dallas Baptist.
Maria embraced Preston’s passion for hoops and came up with a great Christmas surprise one year. He loved watching the Syracuse Orangemen and their epic home games at the Carrier Dome, the game’s largest on-campus arena, where crowds over 20,000 were routine and as many as 35,000 showed up in the throes of winter.
She sent her husband up there; bought two tickets so he could take a friend. What a wife! Preston was delighted.
As to those friends, it’s always been an endless list, and “he had several best friends,” said Maria, chuckling. “In our wedding, we had to have two best men. Kenyon Thomas and Anthony Kimble were his two best friends since they were young.”
He graduated from Northeast Louisiana University (“he didn’t go for ULM when the name changed,” said Maria) and after a few years teaching social studies at Southwood, pursued graduate studies at LSUS and Canisius to become a guidance counselor, a role he filled the rest of his life at Keithville Middle School.
“It was his pleasure and his passion to help young people,” she said. “He loved to see them succeed. He would go out of his way, even with students who weren’t his, to support them, even after they got out of school. That was one of the things I absolutely admired about him. It just didn’t stop with them in middle school, he went on to support them way after that.”
“He loved kids,” said Marshall. “He had a passion for students. You normally don’t find that at a young adult age, but he had it from the time he hit the school grounds when he finished college. And he had a love for mankind.”
The turnout for his funeral service last Friday night at Mt. Olive Baptist Church was predictably large for a man who walked such a broad path.
“Preston knows everybody,” explained Maria, “and everybody knows Preston.”
But for those who didn’t?
“I would say he is one of the most giving, selfless people you could ever want to meet,” she said. “His signature mark was his sarcasm. He loved to be sarcastic and a little witty. He would give you the shirt off his back and he never, ever met a stranger.”
Hiller recalls his friend “always smiling, always into whatever it was he was doing. He was always paying attention to the game and what was going on around it, watching and listening, not talking much. He was a fun guy to be around, a good guy to kid. He’d give it right back to you. He went everywhere and did everything. He knew a lot of people in basketball, all over.”
Marshall treasured Preston’s up-front approach that served him well as he steered young people through precarious days and some scary situations.
“He was direct. You didn’t have to wonder what he meant. He did it with such a sweet spirit, and a sense of humor, some might call it a sharp mouth, but he never said anything malicious. I think we need more direct people in our world.”
“He’s going to be missed in all areas,” said Marshall, “from friendship, the professionalism he showed, the sincerity and compassion he displayed, the support he gave so many in sports and in life, he’s going to be greatly missed. He had a genuine heart.
“He was so humble, yet he was so knowledgeable about the game. He took pride in north Louisiana sports, and tried to support everybody in whatever endeavor they were doing, but especially in the sports arena.”
Although he probably never realized it, Preston was an inspiration.
“He tried to support everyone,” said Marshall. “You would see him at girls games, just as much as you’d see him at boys games. If he had a friend whose child was playing, you’d see him at those games, supporting those kids. I don’t know where he got the energy or found the time to do it all.
“It makes me challenge myself – ask myself, ‘am I supporting enough?’ Being a pastor for 21 years, I’ve done some self-reflection the last few days.
“He was a man of faith. In dying, he encouraged so many to live. Many people got a better idea of living by watching him die. He fought. He wasn’t a complainer. He pushed through when he could, did what he could, and fought until the end.”
The last words painting a picture of Preston Edwards come from the man himself, on his Facebook page: “An educator. A freelance writer. A basketball scout. A professional school counselor, & a God-fearing man.”
It leaves Marshall mulling a permanent tribute.
“One day I sat and read comments online, seeing how many people he influenced, changed their lives for the better. I hope we can start a Preston Edwards basketball event, maybe have games all day one Saturday, like he would love.
“I’m going to get with some coaches and see if we can do something, because he was known all around Louisiana and was admired and appreciated.”
It would be a perfect legacy for a purely good man.
Contact Doug at sbjdoug@gmail.com