Maggie Dixon, the Army women's basketball
coach, collapsed Wednesday, April 5th at the U.S. Military Academy
in West Point, N.Y., a victim of a cardiac arrhythmia, according
to the hosptial. She succumbed on April 6th. She was 28 years
old.
She was from North Hollywood, Calif. In
her rookie season as the Army women's basketball coach, Maggie
led the Black Knights to their first NCAA Tournament appearance.
Her brother is University of Pittsburgh's
head coach, Jamie Dixon. The Dixons are believed to be the first
brother and sister to coach in the men's and women's NCAA tournaments
in the same year. She credits her brother, 12 years her senior,
for getting her into basketball and keeping her there. She said
she was 13 when she started to play at a competitive level. She
went into coaching with encouragement from her brother.
Her players immediately respected her.
"Everybody absolutely loved her when she came in for an
interview," sophomore forward Stefanie Stone said. "Each
one of us got to sit down with her in a group. All of us were
like: 'Wow she's amazing. We want her.' I think from that day
we were all really excited about playing basketball again."
In the men's dominated environment, Ms.
Dixon found joy in the tight bond of her team. "It's the
only time of the day here when it's just the girls", she
stated.
She is survived by her parents, brother,
Jamie, sister, Julie, and it is safe to say, the entire Army
women's basketball team, who were at her bedside throughout Maggie's
ordeal.
Burial at West Point: 4/14/2006
"Taps was played on
the bugle, Amazing Grace on the bagpipes. The ultimate tribute
was the offer of a burial ground in the West Point cemetery,
an honor rarely afforded civilians."
Bay News 9 article
Dixon's family
has requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to Sherman
Oaks (Calif.) Notre Dame High School or the Army Athletic Fund.
Contributions for Notre Dame High
School can be made by contacting Sharon Marciniak, at
818-933-3600
or
13645 Riverside Dr.
Sherman Oaks, CA 91423.
Donations to the Army Athletic
Fund can be made by contacting
Matt Borman, at
845-938-2322
or
639 Howard Road
West Point, NY 10996.
ARTICLES:
With permission from ESPN.COM
by:Adrian Wojnarowski
Maggie Dixon kept saying that this had
been the most unforgettable weekend the Dixons ever had, the
ultimate gathering for March's ultimate basketball family. West
Point's women's coach was talking on her cell phone from a Manhattan
hotel where her older brother, Jamie, was preparing his Pittsburgh
Panthers for the Big East Conference championship game that night.
Maggie and her folks had just finished an afternoon of shopping
on Madison Avenue, and now she was going on and on about how
she hoped that this was the beginning of a long journey of Dixon
championship runs this time of year.
"You dream about a weekend like this,
about being able to share this whole thing with your family,"
Maggie said. This was a weekend that began floating on the tops
of shoulders at the United States Military Academy, an impromptu
ride around the floor flooded with a frenzied corps of cadets.
That's where it started, bobbing in the air at West Point, celebrating
the first Patriot League championship and bid to the NCAA Tournament
for Army women's basketball.
Maggie Dixon had been a storybook coach
of the storybook season, hired from DePaul just days before the
start of preseason practice, winning 20 games and making her
brother and her the first siblings ever to make the NCAA Tournaments
together as coaches. "This is such a great story,"
she said that day in the hotel suite.
And without warning -- without anything
but the cruelest of fates -- the Dixon family was back together
on Thursday at the Westchester Medical Center where the most
vicious of nightmares was unfolding. Maggie Dixon, 28, suffered
an arrhythmia heart episode on Wednesday at West Point, leaving
her in critical condition in the hospital's intensive care unit.
Thursday night, she died at age 28.
Three weeks ago for Maggie Dixon, life
was the Tennessee Volunteers, the NCAA Tournament and becoming
the toast of the Academy. Three weeks ago, they were worried
that they wouldn't be able to keep Dixon at Army long, that she
was on her way to the big time. Three weeks ago, she was living
one of those blessed lives, when everything in life seemed to
be within her grasp.
This is the kind of story, the kind of
tragedy, that leaves a pit in your stomach. Leaves you speechless.
No warning. No justice.
At West Point, they never get used to young
people dying young. It's part of life there, but it's still the
most piercing of pains. When they announced on Thursday morning
that Dixon had passed overnight, they reported, too, the death
of a 2002 graduate who had died in an Apache helicopter crash
in Iraq.
Perhaps they're forever bracing themselves
for news of academy graduates dying overseas, but this one hit
differently because no one could've seen this coming on campus
with Maggie Dixon. Her basketball team had become such an escape
for the Cadets at the Academy. It had become such a surprisingly
special part of the winter.
In the short time that she was at West
Point, the Academy became so fond of Maggie Dixon, so taken with
the basketball team that came out of nowhere to meet Tennessee
in the NCAA Tournament. How many coaches in the history of West
Point had been afforded a standing ovation of 4,000 cadets in
the dining hall? How many people had turned that most stone-sober
place to such elation?
She brought magic to West Point, brought
a touch and genuineness that endeared her and her team in a way
that no one else in women's sports history at the Academy had
done in that male-dominated environment.
In his 30 years in the business, her top
assistant, Dave Magarity, a Division I men's head coach for 25
years, had never been so moved by a scene as that of witnessing
the incredulity of Maggie's face when the cadets picked her up
and paraded her on the court after the Patriot League championship
game in March. West Point finished 20-11, the best basketball
season at West Point since Bob Knight was coaching there more
than 30 years ago.
"She's a special kid," Magarity
told me. He would catch himself calling her a "kid,"
but hey, that -- and coach -- was what she was. "I know
she isn't a kid, but she is to me. But Maggie, she's going to
be a star."
Dixon showed up at DePaul without a job,
without a coaching résumé in 2000. She had been
cut from the WNBA, worked some camps in Southern California,
but she had nothing to show Blue Demons coach Doug Bruno. Nothing
to show him except her intoxicating smile, her engaging disposition,
her hunger to be a coach. He would take a chance on her and never
regret it.
She would move up from director of basketball
operations to assistant coach to recruiting coordinator within
three years. Dixon was on the fast track to stardom, something
that West Point counted upon when it needed a new coach within
weeks of the start of the 2005-06 basketball season. Everything
she's ever touched in basketball had turned to gold. It happened
at West Point, too.
After beating Army 102-54 in the first
round of the tournament, Tennessee coach Pat Summitt said, "There
is no question that they are very well-coached. I have tremendous
respect and admiration for [Dixon]. Maggie has done a great job,
and I know of her work at DePaul. There's coaching in her blood
with her family."
I was just going back through my notes,
remembering our conversation for a column on the morning of the
Big East championship game. She had interrupted our chat for
a moment to wish her brother well before he left for the Garden,
before the whole Dixon family eventually made it down courtside
behind the Pitt bench.
Yes, this had been the best weekend of
the family's life, from the banks of the Hudson River at West
Point all the way to Madison Square Garden. They thought it was
going to be the beginning of years and years of these weekends,
mother and father, brother and sister, chasing March championships
into forever. Three weeks later, the Dixons were gathered again.
No warning, no justice. All of it, just
so cruel.
Adrian Wojnarowski is a sports columnist
for The Record (N.J.) and a regular contributor to ESPN.com.
He can be reached at ESPNWoj10@aol.com. His new book, "The
Miracle Of St. Anthony: A Season with Coach Bob Hurley And Basketball's
Most Improbable Dynasty", is available nationwide.
Legacy.com
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