Yes, this counts as a year for Preston. Don’t know if they can retroactively claim it as a redshirt year, and if he is anywhere near as talented as he is projected to be, he won’t need it any way.
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." - Mark Twain "Innocents Abroad"
