A true "heartbreaking loss"

I think it's just human nature to be disproportionately upset when famous people die, particularly in untimely fashion. I think it's because of the way we view celebrities as these ageless wonders. We get older, but they stay the same age. That's why it frequently comes as a shock to see a more recent picture of someone we largely knew for exploits a while ago - they look like that now? And what does that say about us? Even people who don't live off Us Weekly use celebrities as a mirror more than they would admit, and possibly more than they even know.

This extends to sports as well, and possibly in even greater a fashion, because sports figures generally do have finite shelf lives, whereas actors can, conceivably, keep showing up in movies for decades. Think about the players you grew up watching, in any sport. Even if you're only my age, how many of them are still playing? Especially in baseball, which I've watched for longer than any other sport, a lot of the stars of my youth are gone, and those who remain are, to a man, in their final years. But the mortality of sports personalities is always shocking, in part because we think of athletes as so well-conditioned - but also because we never think of athletes as being that much older than us, due to that shelf life. (Which is a little odd because sports usually make us, at least while younger, throw off our conception of age. "40? That guy's ancient!")

Which is part of what stunned me about the untimely death of Maggie Dixon, the head women's basketball coach at the United States Military Academy. I am, by all accounts, not a fan of women's basketball, but even I had not missed the story; Dixon, a WNBA reject, had turned to coaching, starting at DePaul, working her way up to top assistant in a few short years, and then heading to Army, where she guided the team to its first-ever NCAA Tournament berth. Dixon was carried off the floor by her players when the Cadets won the Patriot League tournament, an image that ran on every sports show in early March. Maggie and brother Jamie, the men's head coach at Pittsburgh, became the first sibling duo to reach their respective tournaments in the same season.

And then, without warning, Maggie Dixon was gone, cut down at the age of 28 by an episode of cardiac arrhythmia apparently caused by an enlarged heart and a problem with a valve, according to the coroner's report. Taken to the hospital on Wednesday after collapsing, she died Thursday night.

We've seen players, even stars, taken in the primes of their lives by many things, including heart ailments. Two of the first names that came to mind for me were Hank Gathers and Reggie Lewis, names echoed by Mike Wilbon today on PTI. Such deaths, because of the age of the people involved (Gathers was just 23, younger than I am now) and their apparent peak physical condition, are shocking.

Dixon was little different - as a fairly recent former player, she was certainly still in good shape (at least outwardly). And she was certainly young - just a year older than Lewis had been, and at 28, one of the youngest Division I basketball coaches, men's or women's. But there was, indeed, something different about Dixon. Lewis was already an All-Star and had played five seasons in the NBA; Gathers had led Division I in scoring and rebounding as a junior at Loyola Marymount and was a bonafide college star in his senior season.

Dixon, by comparison, was effectively unknown to all but the most devoted women's basketball fans until March. Her rise to the top was meteoric - many observers, some of whom possibly had known of Dixon largely in passing prior to the Patriot League tournament or at least Army's surprise 20-win season, were predicting that she would shortly use Army as a stepping stone to even greater positions and success. That sudden rise makes her death all the more shocking - with her recent appearance on the scene, and her youth, everyone assumed she'd be around and successful for a long time. And, perhaps even better than that, she was a good story - the sister of an already successful coach, a first-time head coach taking over an unsuccessful program and immediately turning it around in dramatic fashion, and by all accounts a bright and motivated woman loved by those around her. Andy Katz's story about the relationship between the Dixon siblings brought me to tears.

Untimely deaths frequently help confer a measure of immortality. Just ask Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, and Kurt Cobain. And would Hank Gathers' name be as memorable today if he had toiled through a decent but unspectacular pro career? This is surely cold comfort to anyone who knew Maggie Dixon, however. Early signs suggested that she was poised to make immortality within her profession on her own terms. Yesterday, it was her own mortality that stopped her, a shocking loss to anyone who understands that sports are never just about the box scores.