Witt Edwards is a young athlete who has refused to hold himself back. Being unafraid to learn has been his strategy, and it’s earned him the opportunity to compete at a Division 1 school. More than twenty schools recruited him, but Edwards chose Vanderbilt because they offered him the chance to play as a freshman—on both offense and defense.
Not many football players run plays going both directions on the field, but not many football players started out with rodeo cowboy dreams, either. From growing up in Fairfax rodeoing, to adapting to wrestling and football in Wagoner, the “suspense of not knowing the outcome” has motivated Edwards to give his all. It won him state titles in football and wrestling this year, too.
Brian Edwards, Witt’s dad, saw from early on that his son was a star talent. “He could do anything that he wanted to do. Some things came easy to Witt, with his size and his ability. Nobody thinks a kid that is 6’6 can move and do some of the things that he can do. He’s got a God-given ability,” said Edwards, who is a coach at Wagoner High School.
Edwards’ job took Witt’s family from Pawhuska to Fairfax, and then to Wagoner where the young Witt faced the challenges of adjusting to what he calls “the big city.” He found the school was larger and more sports-focused than the 2A divisions of Pawhuska and Fairfax, where he was closer to country life and horses.
Through it all, Witt focused on being open. “You never know unless you try, that’s something that I always say to myself. Some people hold their self back by being almost scared of the world, but … I want to go try something crazy, something brand new, because you never know … you might not know because you just thought ‘that’s not for me,’ without putting any effort into it.”
His mother Cindee Boucher Edwards is from Fairfax, and like her husband and son, is an athlete. “When [our kids] were little, we tried to sign them up for anything and everything … we would go from a rodeo, changing clothes in the truck, to a baseball game. We all were into sports.”
While Witt’s rodeo career has been put on hold due to football, he says that as long as you can swing your leg over a horse, you can still rodeo. He is planning to study agriculture and business at Vanderbilt, where he wants to investigate his questions about resources for horses.
The foray into football has been well worth it; in his junior year, he received 20 Division I offers and told Channel 6 news that calf roping, as well as wrestling, helped him adjust to football.
“With calf roping, being able to bend down and flank the calf,” he said, explaining how wrestling helps with defense. When he moved to Wagoner, he figured out that “it was a football town. And I started to like it,” he says. It wasn’t long before football started to like him back. As a star punter and an offensive-defensive player, he attracted recruiters from top schools.
When it came to Vanderbilt, Witt was more focused on the relationship than the name. His mother explained that Vanderbilt stood out to the whole family, too. “Their recruiting was top notch. Out of 20 schools, they were the only school that wanted to talk to me, his mother.”
In addition to family, curiosity and bravery, Witt is drawn to learning new things. In his free time, he’s taken to playing golf, and he also hunts. His passion for staying active captivated Vanderbilt, whose recruiters would find that every time they called him, they would find him up to something. They loved this about him, said his mother. “He doesn’t sit still, he literally has to be outside doing something most of the time. … Every single time [recruiters] called he put them on Facetime, and showed them what he was doing,” she said.
As a college athlete, Witt will attend mandatory team breakfasts; night time studying sessions; and follow a plan to put on college ball muscle, on top of grueling practice sessions. His parents are not concerned though, and describe Witt as responsible—a trait he learned from rodeo, in particular, where he and his five siblings saddled their own horses, and brushed and fed them.
“I grew up in the country and that’s just kind of where I came from,” he reflected. “I got away from that a little bit playing at Wagoner, but I’ve always loved horses and animals. There’s certain stuff about animals, there’s so many questions and so many solutions that could be out there for horses and to help horses … with ag business, I want to go into helping horses with supplements. … There’s not as many resources as what I think there should be,” he said.
His Osage and Black heritage have both provided a strong foundation for him, and he describes these two sides of his family as creating a middle path. “It’s kind of like, I think really there’s like a middle with me, so my mom she’s really big into the Osage part, and she’s very big into me expressing my culture and expressing that I got the country background and I love that. … I think really what I get from my grandparents, my grandmother [she] is a very Christian lady, and my grandfather is the deacon. With my Black side of the family, everything is about family.”
Witt went to Head Start through first grade in Fairfax and participated in the Inlonshka as a child; he hopes to return to his Osage culture once his sports schedules slow down, and describes his cultural connection as most strongly tied to his maternal grandmother, Marilyn King Boucher.
“When I was little I used to go to the dances and be in the dances … I was big into it, I would get all dressed up, and I used to love it. I’ve been back to a couple but I’d love to [return], that’s what my grandma always asked me. She went to the dances in Pawhuska last year and I was at a visit for football,” said Witt. “But I wanted to go [to the Inlonshka], that’s still a side of me,” he said. “Growing up in the Osage, me and my siblings talk about it all the time, I can never give that up, I would never want to change anything.”
To see more of Witt’s journey (ahead of Vanderbilt games this fall,) you can download the Very Local app at https://www.verylocal.com/apps/ and watch the documentary Sports Town Stories’ “OKC Athletes Play on Their Own Terms.” Witt will also be playing in the 2024 Native American All State football game at Memorial Field in El Reno on June 7 at 7 p.m.
