Remembering Another Champion

Amid the excitement of March Madness and the upcoming NCAA college basketball tournament, I'd be remiss if I didn't pause and reflect on one of the things that touched me most from last season's postseason frenzy.

Not only am I huge fan of the NCAA men's tournament, I'm also a fairly big fan of the women's college game. Part of that could be the school I went to -- Old Dominion, which coach Wendy Larry is guiding to yet another 20-win season and a possible 16th straight CAA title -- but I like the game itself. It's not always as pretty or flashy as the men's game, but it's still basketball.

And come on, watching Candace Parker play is one of the top ten best things to do in sports...in my opinion, anyway.

But what I want to discuss came last year. ODU was one of the host sites for the first round of the NCAA women's tourney, which meant eight teams would flood the Ted Constant Convocation Center for a weekend. I don't remember all eight teams there, but I know ODU, USC, Tennessee, George Washington and Army were there.

George Washington is important because it beat ODU in the first round, but what I want to focus on isn't Tennessee, but the Lady Vols' first round opponent, Army.

More specifically, Army's head coach.

By this point, most everyone already knew the story of Maggie Dixon. Pittsburgh men's basketball coach Jamie Dixon's younger sister, Maggie took the Army job 11 days before the start of the season. Twenty wins and 11 losses later, Army was searching for the first NCAA bid in the program's history. And in winning the Patriot League tournament, the team did just that.

Maggie was taking this team to the NCAA tournament.

Never mind the 15 seed, or the first round beatdown at the hands of Tennessee. Army had made the NCAA tournament, and the general feeling surrounding Maggie and the program was one of elation and hope. I remember talking to an Army cadet in the hospitality room between games at the tournament that weekend, and he was all smiles after the loss, waxing poetic about how wonderful a coach and person Maggie was.

In fact, I distinctly remember him saying, "We have nowhere to go but up so long as Maggie's the coach of this team. We'll be in the tournament for years to come."

Three weeks later, on April 5, 2006, I thought of that cadet. I thought of him and what he said when I found out Maggie had died that day of an "arrhymetic episode of her heart." I thought of him when the autopsy revealed she'd had an enlarged heart and a heart valve problem. I thought of him and the girls who played their hearts out for Maggie just weeks earlier.

I thought of how weeks earlier, in my campus' home arena, I'd seen her coaching. How she'd stood not 60 feet away from me, directing her players and cheering them on, even when Tennessee was wiping the floor with them. I thought of her in the post-game press conference, smiling that infectious smile of hers.

I thought of stopping her after the press conference and talking to her for a few brief moments, discussing her team and what she expected out of the next season. That smile never left her face, and I left that encounter, brief as it was, feeling better. I had a smile the rest of the day that was hard to shake.

I thought of her brother, who had been bounced in the second round of his tourney by Bradley. I thought of how they were the first brother and sister to coach in the NCAA tournament in the same season. He was in the area for the PIT, but flew back up to New York when Maggie was in the hospital. As important as basketball was to the Dixons, family was more so.

I thought of how the players sobbed and mourned at her funeral, and how the general feeling of loss not only hit Army, but all of women's college basketball. I thought of Maggie every time I shook Wendy Larry's hand this year, feeling for the entire Army community.

It might seem odd to outsiders that Maggie was buried at the West Point cemetery, an honor usually reserved for high-ranking officials. A basketball coach next to commanders and lieutenants, but that speaks to just how important Maggie was to the Army community, and how much she captured a nation's attention with her team's Patriot League title. I still get chills every time I see the video of her team hoisting her into the air in celebrating that title, and I suspect we'll see that video again in the coming weeks.

Army won't make a return trip to the tournament this year -- Holy Cross took the Patriot League's automatic bid and Army's not looking good for an at-large despite a 24-6 record -- but the memory of last season's run, and the coach behind it, remains.

I'll root hard in this year's tournament, and I'll fill out a bracket like I always do. But this year, I'll do it with Maggie Dixon in mind, and I'll probably be smiling the whole way through.

Cause you know, she's probably doing the same thing out there somewhere.