Friday, April 07, 2006

Maggie Dixon

It's always horrible when someone dies in the prime of life, and that's how I felt when I heard that Maggie Dixon, the sister of Pitt basketball coach Jamie Dixon, died yesterday. She was 28 years old and had to be on top of the world. She'd led her team to the NCAA tournament, her brother did the same, and for each of them it seemed the sky was the limit. According to the Post-Gazette Maggie Dixon died because she had an enlarged heart and a valve that wasn't functioning properly. It doesn't seem possible that this young, vital woman could die this suddenly.

But it seems doubly cruel that the school mourning Dixon's death is West Point. While cadets are certainly more aware of the possibility that life (including their life) might be cut short at any time, it seems so unfair that they have to deal with a tragedy involving their basketball coach.

In Adrian Wojnarowski's column on ESPN, he wrote that in addition to announcing Dixon's death, West Point also announced that a 2002 graduate was killed in an Apache helicopter crash in Iraq. Life can be unbearably cruel.

posted by Gene @ 6:24 PM   |