EDGARD — Not long after his oldest son Juan died in November of 2014, Greg “Buck” Joseph went to Juan’s house and gathered up his lawn equipment — his lawn mower, his weed-eater, his blower and even the pair of worn out tennis shoes Juan used to wear to cut his grass.

Since then, every time Greg mows his own lawn, he uses Juan’s lawn mower and he wears his son’s shoes.

“His foot was a little bigger than mine, but that doesn’t matter,” Greg said. “It makes me feel closer to him.”

Greg is following in his son’s footsteps in other ways, as well.

Juan Joseph was a stand-out athlete at West St. John High School, where he played basketball, baseball and football, winning football state titles in 2003 and 2004. He went on to have a stellar college career at Millsaps College, passing for more than 9,000 yards, throwing 87 touchdowns and collecting three consecutive Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference Player of the Year awards — the first player ever to do so.

Despite no real aspirations to play professionally, Juan had brief stints with the Edmonton Eskimos and the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian Football League and with the Lafayette Wildcatters of the Southern Indoor Football League. When that ended, he decided to forego a potentially promising career in business to return home to teach and coach at his alma mater, where he was an assistant football coach, the head baseball coach and a beloved mentor.

He also became his dad’s boss, with Greg having spent many years as an assistant baseball coach at West St. John.

All of that ended on Nov. 16, 2014, when Juan was shot and killed outside a Baton Rouge nightclub while trying to defuse a fight. He left behind a devastated family, including his pregnant wife and young daughter, and an entire community.

The tragedy also could have left the West St. John baseball team without a coach, but Greg said that was never really a possibility.

“It never crossed my mind not to stay and coach,” Greg said. “Knowing Juan, the person he was, I know he would say, ‘Dad, you have to keep doing what you’re doing and keep coaching those kids.’ Our family, we’ve always been the kind of people to give back.”

Greg had been volunteering his time as a coach at West St. John since 2001, about the time Juan got to the high school. He also had coached for many years in the St. John Recreation department. A 1974 graduate of Leon Godchaux High School in Reserve, Greg was a promising baseball player at Grambling State until he was hit by a pitch and broke his throwing arm.

Now a longtime supervisor at ArcelorMittal (the former Bayou Steel), Greg has coached generations of baseball talent in the parish. While his recreation teams have achieved great success, building a successful high school program on the West Bank has been more of a challenge. The football team has collected three state championship trophies and four runner-up trophies. The basketball team won a title in 2000. The baseball Rams have won only one playoff game in their history.

“I’m from the East Bank of the river,” Joseph said. “Baseball was always big over there. We played all the time. Here, their main focus has been football and basketball. I think the kids here have talent, but baseball is just not that big of a thing. I want us to be competitive.”

That is not to say there is no love for the game in Edgard.

Juwan Boudoin is a senior member of the West St. John baseball team that has routinely been on the receiving end of some lopsided losses.

“It’s fun being out there with your friends and your teammates,” Boudoin said. “I’m a proud West St. John baseball player.”

Boudoin also was one of Juan’s protégés at quarterback.

“It was very hard,” he said. “The Monday after, we didn’t know what to do. The first game was hard.”

The first baseball season was hard too, Boudoin said.

“He’s (Greg) is very intense,” Boudoin said. “(Juan) was the same, but in a more playful manner.”

The Josephs have known Boudoin for most of his life, certainly for most of his athletic life. He was so close that Greg gifted Boudoin with one of Juan’s cherished pairs of Jordan sneakers.

“I have them,” Boudoin said. “I wear them sometimes, on special occasions.”

Greg said he is still coming to grips with his son’s tragic death, which he references only by its date. “After Nov. 16,” he says. But he is buoyed by the response it received. The Edgard community rallied around him and his wife Elizabeth in the days and weeks after, and they still receive condolences from people they run into. Every one of them offers nothing but praise for the young man they lost at the age of 27.

“That makes me feel like me and my wife did something right,” Greg said. “He did everything right as a son. I did everything in the world for him. He did everything for us. There was nothing left unsaid. I can’t even say I have regrets. That’s one of the greatest gifts I have gotten.”