She plays forward with a frame built for contact and a first step that closes gaps before defenders can react, the kind of game that rewards someone who spent her youth as one of the only Black players on every roster she joined and learned to make that isolation invisible on the ice. She has spoken about the racist taunts and stares that came with being a rare presence in youth and junior hockey, obstacles that never show up in a box score but shaped how she carries herself now, matter-of-fact and unwilling to treat her presence in the sport as something that requires an apology or an explanation.

Edwards grew up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, the daughter of Robert Edwards, who played running back at Georgia and briefly in the NFL, in a household where more than one of her siblings also plays the sport. She has talked about wanting young Black kids watching hockey to see her and understand the sport is theirs too, not a favor extended to them but a place they belong by right. She is still at Wisconsin, still adding to a career that started making history before she could legally buy a drink, and the record on her is nowhere close to finished.