Sidelines Kalani Simpson

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Dixon's inspiring ride cut way short

SHE took the job 11 days before the first practice, an impossible start to an unenviable task. She was who they could find on short notice, a young coach with good bloodlines, eager enough to take on Army as her first job as a head coach. Yes, it was impossible -- but she blew everyone away.

Now all she had to do was actually do the job. A service academy! Army! Eleven days.

She dove right in.

She was 28.

You know this story. You know it because everyone knows it, of course. It's national news. A once-in-a-lifetime narrative, a bittersweet, wonderful, heartwarming, heartbreaking, inspiring, depressing, crying jag of a tale. You know it because Maggie Dixon was the sister of former Hawaii basketball assistant Jamie Dixon. She was family.

"We all knew her," UH assistant Jackson Wheeler said.

She was 28.

Her funeral was this morning in North Hollywood, Calif. The forecast was for mostly-cloudy skies.

MAGGIE DIXON'S CAREER as a head coach started out 5-7. Army's last women's basketball leader had resigned at an awkward time, and the team was in turmoil and she hadn't even had enough time to hit the ground running. At West Point, you get "some of the best kids in the country," said Rainbow Wahine director of basketball operations Elizabeth O'Brien, a former top assistant for the Black Knights. They have discipline and work ethic and pride. But at Army, big-time basketball is not the priority. There are academics and tactics and officer training and intelligence and getting ready for war.

"There are so many demands on the kids' time," O'Brien said.

But there were those first five wins. Then more. Then the standing ovation from the corps in the mess hall. Then the Patriot League regular-season championship. Then the fever, growing. Then they had won 20.

Winning, at Army. Big-time basketball, at Army. A championship, at Army.

March Madness, at Army.

"It was almost like a regular college," senior forward Megan Vrabel would tell the Associated Press.

Maggie Dixon had done this. It was a miracle.

"You know when the last kid on the bench has nice things to say about the coach she's a special person," O'Brien said.

Riley Wallace said, "Every time you were talking to Jamie" -- his former assistant, now the head coach at Pittsburgh -- "he was talking about Maggie to you." That's how close they were.

Wallace saw the two of them together at the Final Four. Maggie came up to give him a hug. She was glowing, still basking in the season that had been a fairy tale come true. Wallace playfully asked her why she had that huge smile on her face.

"It's going to stay there for a long time," she said. She was going to stay at Army for a long time.

SHE WAS WITH them for that magical season. She got the job 11 days before their first practice. Eighteen days after their last game, she was gone.

"I love the energy that Coach brings to practice every day. She never gives up on us," guard Cara Enright said after Army's 20th win.

They'd carried her on their shoulders, after that one. The cadets had rushed the court -- they rushed the court! -- after the 69-68 win that gave Army the Patriot League tournament title. At Army, they rushed the court.

It was a mob scene. It was March Madness. The Army football players had picked her up on their shoulders. They carried her off the court, and she raised her finger to the sky.

Bring on Tennessee. Army was going to the big dance.

Maggie and Jamie were both in the big dance.

She was 28.

"Such a sweetheart," Jackson Wheeler said.

"She was special," Riley Wallace said.

Eighteen days after Army's loss in the first round of the NCAA tournament, she was gone. She died last Thursday. An arrhythmic episode. An enlarged heart. A bad valve.

Her Army team is in California, today. That team she'd taken on this wonderful single-season ride.

O'Brien still talks to some of them. Her voice is raw when she talks about talking to them.

"They're devastated. Devastated. There's no other word for it," she said.

Pitt released a statement from Jamie Dixon about his sister.

"Maggie touched so many people beyond basketball. I know she looked up to me. But I always looked up to her, too," he said.

This season, we all saw why. This season ...

"And it's obvious that a lot of other people did as well," Jamie Dixon said.

Maggie Dixon's funeral was this morning. She was 28. Her time was too short.

Her heart was too big.