As always, Justin Edwards aims to ‘keep things going in the right direction’

The 2001-02 season remains the greatest in the history of the Elizabethtown College men’s basketball program. And deep into it, the Blue Jays found themselves locked in the kind of knock-down, drag-out game that is as typical of the NCAA Division III Tournament as it is the Big Dance.

The opponent has been lost to memory. Might have been Cabrini in the Sweet 16, or Clark in the Elite Eight. That’s immaterial, as the Jays beat both en route to the championship game, where they fell to Otterbein.

What is germane is that during one timeout huddle E-town coach Bob Schlosser was diagramming a sideline inbounds play that would result in his power forward (the 4-man, in hoops parlance) taking a baseline jumper.

Normally that would be Bob Porambo, the team’s leading scorer. One problem, though: He wasn’t in the game at the time. His backup, Justin Edwards, was.

“And Justin looked at me and said, ‘Hey, you better get Bob back in there,’” Schlosser, now retired, recalled recently. “Before I even said it he recognized it and realized, ‘Well, this isn’t for me. We need Porambo in there to take that shot.’” 

The moment – “a rarity,” Schlosser said – serves as a commentary on how top-notch teams operate, on how everybody needs to check their egos at the door. And it serves in particular as an example of how Edwards, recently hired as the head boys’ coach at Hershey High School, goes about his business.

A 46-year-old Annville-Cleona graduate, Edwards succeeds Paul Blackburn, who retired after 16 years at Hershey and 28 years as a head coach, nine of those at Lebanon. Edwards was a Trojans assistant under Blackburn the last 13 of those seasons. Before that he was A-C’s head coach for two, and before that he was one of Schlosser’s assistants at E-town for nine.

At every stop, and at every stage of his career, he said his role has been to “to help move things along,” to “keep things going in the right direction.”

To give his teams the best shot at winning, in other words.

That was literally true in that long-ago NCAA game. As he put it, he and Porambo both played the same position, “except one was a 6-6 ‘4’ who was a knock-down shooter, and one was a 6-1 ‘4,’ who was good at running into people. Let’s go for the shooter in this case, huh?”

Neither he nor Schlosser mentioned the result of the play, and that too is immaterial. The point is that Edwards – “the definition of team guy,” as former E-town teammate Rocky Parise called him – understood what was needed to facilitate winning, and how a successful club’s gears mesh. Still does, too.

In addition to being part of those ’01-02 Jays, he assisted a Hershey squad that last season won the school’s first District Three championship in 52 years and advanced all the way to the PIAA 5-A Final, where the Trojans fell to Neumann-Goretti. So he knows what it takes to succeed – talent and hard work, obviously, but also chemistry, sacrifice, attention to detail, etc.

“It’s the little things that matter,” Schlosser said, adding that Edwards “has a knowledge of what the intangibles are, and how to articulate that to the players, because he’s experienced that.”

The payoff for doing so is immeasurably sweet. Parise, who besides playing at E-town is a former Jays assistant and Elizabethtown High head coach, said winning big leads to “an addictive feeling.”

“It makes us all chase that feeling, that utopia of sports,” he said. “It gets in your blood.”

It’s worth savoring, worth holding onto. Because it’s never easy to climb the ladder, to be one of the last teams standing. Edwards tried to get that across to the Trojans before the many big games they played this past season.

As he put it, “I always tell the kids now, ‘Take a second. Don’t feel the nerves. Don’t feel the pressure. But feel the environment. Feel the moment. Enjoy it. Drink it in.’”

And understand everything that went into it – how steps cannot be skipped and the process cannot be cheated.

“Sometimes things just evolve organically from the way you go about things,” said Blackburn, who went 270-132 at Hershey, 462-252 overall. “I don’t believe in luck. I think you create your luck.”

He believes that was true when he played at Carlisle High School in the 1980s, eventually working his way up the pecking order until he became a starter on the second of four straight state-championship teams. And he believes it was true when he walked on at Slippery Rock, and played on some strong clubs there.

It’s no different for Edwards, Blackburn believes.

“He finds a way to be part of successful things,” he said. “Then when it’s all said and done, you’re like, ‘Man, that guy’s lucky.’ No he’s not. He created those opportunities. And I think he’s going to create opportunities for these kids.”

Edwards has an appropriate nickname for a guy looking to mix various ingredients together: Stew. It dates back to his freshman year at A-C, when he and an upperclassman – “one of those football-basketball-type guys,” he said – were both taking the same German class.

“He might have been a junior in German I, which probably was pretty telling,” Edwards said. “And I’m pretty sure he thought my last name was Stewart. He thought my name was Justin Stewart.”

(Footnote: There was in fact a basketball player at Hempfield at that time named Justin Stewart.)

Anyway, Edwards/Stew continued, the older kid was “trying to get my homework.” And he kept calling him Stew. Edwards’ friends picked up on it, and it snowballed to the point where everybody began calling him that. And that remains the case.

“It wasn’t a first name, it wasn’t a last name – it was a one name,” Edwards said. “It was a JLo. No first, no last – just Stew.”

His most noteworthy high school teammate was Mark Linebaugh, Annville’s second all-time leading scorer, and Edwards described his role as follows: “to protect Mark Linebaugh, screen for Mark Linebaugh, make sure nobody knocked Mark Linebaugh over.”

The coach at the time was Scott Pera, who would lead the Dutchmen to a state title in 1999, the year after Edwards graduated. To him, playing for Pera and Schlosser and working under Blackburn is tantamount to being exposed to “a local Mount Rushmore of coaching influences.”

After his nine-year apprenticeship under Schlosser, he coached the Dutchmen to a 12-33 record over two seasons, but for various reasons thought he would be better off on the Hershey staff when the JV position came open. For one thing, he and his wife Ashley had two young children. For another he was already working as a fourth-grade teacher in the Derry Township District, a position he has now held for 23 years. 

So he made the leap, and when he learned after this past season that Blackburn was moving on, he elected to make another. He did so after consulting with fellow assistants Ron Grier and Colton Leonard, the three of them believing that it would be best for the program’s continuity if an in-house candidate took the reins.

Edwards and Grier were among those who applied, and while Edwards got the job, Grier will remain a varsity assistant. Leonard will assume Edwards’ old job as the JV boss, and Enmeko Sweeney will remain the ninth-grade coach.

“Paul’s leaving as a legend,” Edwards said. “And arguably that makes me an idiot. There’s no way of replacing him.”

But as always he will try to keep things moving along. 

“I always said there’s two reasons kids play basketball at Hershey: They like basketball and they want to be part of a team,” Blackburn said. “Everything else – I want to be leading scorer, I want to be all-conference, I should start, I hope I get to play this year, I hope I don’t get cut – that’s all extra.”

So the idea for the new coach is to zero in on those things, to tap into the culture. There are other matters, certainly, like replacing the departed Cam Sweeney, Enmeko’s son and the school’s all-time leading scorer with 1,459 points.

As Edwards said, “We’re going to have to find different ways to score 60 points. If you get 60 points in a varsity game, you’ll be pretty successful, so we’ll have to beg, borrow, and steal.”

But the bottom line is always the same, and Edwards understands that better than most. He knows full well the importance of buy-in. Of banding together. Of giving your team the best shot at victory, sometimes literally.

“I think Justin has that perspective in all his experiences,” Blackburn said. “I think that’s the thing: Being a role player on a successful team, you get a bench-side seat, and then once in a while you get to get out there and you get to contribute, so it’s a beautiful place to be. Everybody wants to be the star, but I’m telling you, it still ain’t bad being a part of a team that wins and everybody’s pulling in the same direction.”

All while knowing what’s way out there, in the distance. What can be achieved, when things fall into place. How it’s a feeling like no other, and worth every ounce of effort.