Jay Preston '22
When I was on my visit they really made me feel like I was at home. Also, campus, it’s just really nice. I feel like this is a place I can really grow as a person and a player.
Jay Preston has five words in the back of his mind every day. It’s a simple phrase borrowed from a friend: Let your ambition carry you.
“I really live by that,” Jay said in an interview before the start of the 2019–20 Bobcat Basketball season. “There’s always room to just keep going.”
The rising sophomore at Ohio University, who plays guard for Bobcat men’s basketball, knows a bit about the power of ambition and persistence. As a high school student in Orlando, Florida, Preston was barely six feet tall and rail thin. He managed to make the varsity team but only averaged 2 points a game in his senior year.
His efforts to bulk up were derailed during his high school career when he lost his mother to lung cancer. “She taught me a lot of great morals,” Preston said. “She told me to always stay focused and determined.”
Apparently, Jay was listening.
Despite lackluster performance in high school and no college offers, Jay wasn’t ready to give up the game or his lifelong dream of playing basketball in college. He found a spot on a local basketball team with the Amateur Athletic Union, an organization that helps amateur athletes prepare for Olympic and professional sports. His AAU coaches saw potential, but he still wasn’t big enough or good enough to land an offer from a Division One school. However, he did get an invitation from a preparatory school in Athens, Tenn. During his time there, he grew three inches, gained some weight, and came into his own as a player. Eventually, he earned the attention of recruiters.
“I’ve always really wanted to play college basketball,” Jay said. “I had a goal, and I was really determined to get that goal. I knew if I ever got the opportunity, I would be successful.”
It seems he was right. In his debut season, Jay scored an average of 6.4 points per game in conference play with 103 total assists.
Ohio University wasn’t the only school to offer Jay the opportunity he had been waiting for, and he said his choice to join the Bobcats was a lot about the community of support he found in Athens.
“When I was on my visit they really made me feel like I was at home,” he said. “Also, campus, it’s just really nice. I feel like this is a place I can really grow as a person and a player.”
OHIO’s well-known sport management program in the College of Business was also a selling point. Jay said if he doesn’t go professional after college, he hopes to have a job in sports.
As you might imagine, though, Jay isn’t giving up on hopes of a career as a professional athlete, and he has big plans for his tenure as a Bobcat. “I have a lot of big goals for myself and the team. For the team, it’s obviously to win a MAC Championship and to make some noise.”
With new head coach Jeff Boals having just joined OHIO in March, and a men’s basketball roster that currently consists mostly of underclassmen, Jay’s declaration is ambitious, but his determination is infectious. Considering Jay’s track record for making dreams a reality, it’s not so tough to envision that MAC Championship coming soon.
“I’m just ready to prove more people wrong,” he said, “to keep going forward.”