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WEST POINT, N.Y. -- Sometimes Margaree "Redd" King thinks her former Army basketball coach is going to walk through the door at any moment. Six months after Maggie Dixon died from heart failure at 28, the disbelief lingers.
"I feel like she's off on a recruiting visit or something," says King, a junior guard.
To various degrees, the players are still struggling with the loss of the vibrant woman who guided Army to its first Division I NCAA tournament and changed their lives immeasurably during her short time on campus.
There are times when Jamie Dixon, Pittsburgh's men's basketball coach, reaches for the phone and starts dialing his sister's number. The two would usually talk late at night, after a recruiting trip or game. "At times I still don't believe it, but you have to smile and think about the good times," he says.
Dave Magarity, an assistant last year and now Army's head coach, laughs when he thinks of Maggie Dixon in her high heels pacing the sideline. "She was always dressed to the gills," he says.
Micky Mallette, a senior captain last year and now the team's director of basketball operations, retells some of the jokes that Dixon would deliver in the huddle to ease pressure during games.
Others recall the coach's regular trips to the mess hall to drum up support for her team. By the end of the season, the gym was packed with cadets.
When the Black Knights won the Patriot League title with a stirring victory against Holy Cross, the cadets stormed the court and hoisted Dixon into the air. When she arrived at the mess hall the next day, those 4,000 cadets gave her a standing ovation.
Dixon was named Patriot League coach of the year in her first season, but her greater legacy rests within those she touched. A new season is set to begin, and in many ways she's still in the gym.
"If it wasn't for her, I honestly don't know where I would be. I probably wouldn't be here, probably wouldn't be doing anything," says King, who had considered leaving the academy. "That's how much of an impact she had on me. She had confidence in me that I never experienced before."
Still touching lives
Forward Stefanie Stone had played just one minute in 2004. Last season Stone became a starter and hit the winning free throw against Holy Cross that sent the Black Knights to the NCAA tournament. "She taught us to believe in ourselves," Stone says of Dixon.
Mallette endured a debilitating back injury that ultimately ended her military career before it started. "If another coach had been here, I'm not sure I would have played because I didn't practice a whole lot," Mallette says. "She allowed me to have an important role."
Dixon sprinkled her magic dust on Magarity, as well. After three decades as a men's college coach, including 18 years as Marist's head coach and a brief stint as a league administrator, Magarity had been soured by the sport's politics.
"He told us that this was the most fun he's ever had," King says. "He lost the love for the game, and we brought it back to him."
"These kids were just incredible, knowing what they went through all day long starting at 5 in the morning," Magarity says. "Their attitude and work ethic was infectious."
Still, Magarity wasn't planning on coming back for a second season. Soon after the season ended he was offered a job with the NBA's Charlotte Hornets as director of college scouting and player personnel. His close friend Jeff Bower, the Hornets' general manager, was one of his former assistants at Marist.
But days after returning from the men's and women's Final Fours, Dixon collapsed while at a friend's house. When she died April 6 because of an enlarged heart, the shock numbed a campus familiar with its own dying young.
"Let's be honest, these kids are part of a culture in which we're going to lose people," Magarity says.
Just last week Emily Perez, a 2005 graduate and member of the track team, was buried on campus, the first female graduate of West Point to die in Iraq.
"That's a fact of life here," Magarity says. "But these are young kids who haven't lost a lot of people in their lives."
This season there will be difficult moments, especially the first day of practice. "Each day that passes, I wouldn't say it gets easier, because it's never easy and I never think it goes away, but it gets a little bit better," Mallette says. "I guess you accept it a little bit more."
Dixon's initials are inscribed on the team's championship rings. The team's T-shirts say "We will ..." in reference to the pregame routine that Dixon brought from DePaul. The players read cards which might say "We will rebound" or "We will take care of the ball." On the T-shirts, the initials MD are inside a clover, just like a tattoo that Dixon had. "I want them to always feel that she's always a part of what we do," Magarity says.
Laid to rest at West Point
On the high bluffs along the Hudson River, on a patch of grass scattered with clover, Margaret M. Dixon is buried at West Point Cemetery, just behind former Army football great Glenn Davis and Black Knights football coach Earl "Red" Blaik. Being buried at West Point is an honor not typically afforded to civilians, but her players weren't surprised that Dixon rests alongside war heroes and legendary leaders.
"She embodies what West Point teaches us as leaders," King says. "She was positive; she led by example. She was honest, straight up with you at all times. One thing we learn here is you're supposed to care about the people you're leading, and she did. She made everyone on this team feel special, that they had something to offer. If I can be like her just a little bit, and bless the world just a little bit like she did, I will have done a great thing."
At first, Dixon's parents, Jim and Marge, who live in North Hollywood, Calif., wanted their daughter to be buried as close as possible.
"As we looked at it, we realized the impact she had," Jamie Dixon says. "She will always be remembered as the coach at West Point."
In June the entire Dixon family was visiting the grave site when a tour bus pulled up to the cemetery. "We joked that Maggie always had a sense of timing," Jamie Dixon says with a small laugh. "Now she's part of the tour."
Her players visit her grave when walking through campus. "I'm glad we get to talk to her and go say hello," says junior guard Cara Enright. "I like going there to stop by and see what's up."
As her players are learning, the relationship doesn't have to end when a loved one is lost. It just changes.
When practice begins next week, Maggie Dixon will be there, too.
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