The person we should all want to be when we grow up

Billy Joel once sang, “Only the good die young.”

For some, those words ring true one too… Billy Joel once sang, “Only the good die young.”

For some, those words ring true one too many times in life. Others are lucky enough never to experience them.

The University of Pittsburgh’s Athletics Department, along with its fans, experienced them over the weekend when its not-so-distant relation, Army women’s basketball coach Maggie Dixon, passed away at the young age of 28.

Maggie, who we all knew as the youngest sister of Pitt men’s basketball coach Jamie Dixon, garnered national attention this year after leading her team to its first-ever Patriot League title.

Within one year, she sat atop the basketball world — on the shoulders of cadets after winning her championship. Within a few hard-pressed seconds, everything ended.

I didn’t personally know Maggie Dixon.

What I do know is what she meant to her basketball team. An Army official said it best this week on ESPN when he claimed that, “I know we lost a Maggie Dixon, but I believe she left behind 20 more Maggie Dixons on her team.”

I do know the lasting impression she left at West Point in her short stay. The officials having her buried there — an act usually reserved for high-ranking officials — is proof enough of that.

I also know she left that same impression on the lives of a number of others she came across. A reported 1,200 people showed at her funeral Tuesday to mourn together with the Dixons.

“Maggie touched so many people beyond basketball,” Jamie said in a statement. “As her older brother, I know she looked up to me. But I looked up to her, too, and it’s obvious that a lot of other people did as well.”

I don’t personally know Jamie Dixon, either, other than asking him a few questions here and there about his basketball team.

I do know, however, that he respects what I do and respects our staff and treats us as he does any other newspaper. Some student journalists can’t say the same of their high-profile men’s basketball coach.

And I also know the kind of bond that siblings can form — the type Jamie and his youngest sister Maggie shared through life and basketball. I live that strong of a bond with my older brother, Ryan.

When Maggie’s professional basketball career ended with her being cut, it was Jamie who was beside her, guiding her into the coaching profession. It was Jamie at her Army press conference when she accepted her first head coaching gig.

It was Jamie, after his Panthers defeated Louisville in the first round of the Big East Tournament, filled with joy upon hearing about his little sister being carried off the court that same night.

And it’s Jamie that we see in AP photos from Tuesday, kissing his baby sister’s coffin one final time.

In the background of this unfortunate event is sports, and, more specifically, basketball. Sports, to some, are simply games used for entertainment. To others, sports is life — a job that lasts way past the traditional eight-hour days and 40-hour workweeks. Sports can be a job that involves mentoring kids into respectable men and women, as Jamie’s job does and Maggie’s job did.

Basketball connected Maggie and Jamie on just one more level. Together they made history, not once, but twice last season as a brother-sister tandem coaching at the Division-I level.

Through basketball, Jamie will carry on what Maggie taught him. He told the Associated Press Tuesday that, “She made me a better person. I’ve said this before — when I grow up, I want to be just like her.”

It’s a powerful statement, considering Jamie is 12 years older than Maggie.

Again, I didn’t know Maggie Dixon personally. But I know that her story alone has left an impression in my life, and without our shared love of sports, that may not have happened.

Life can be sports, and sports can be life — if that’s what the big man upstairs has planned out for you. Whatever your situation, it should never have to end like this, like it did for Maggie Dixon — so soon, so sudden.

It’s hard to say and even harder to accept, but you know how it goes:

“Darlin’, only the good die young.”

Alan Smodic is a senior staff writer for The Pitt News. E-mail him at ams85@pitt.edu.