As I noted before, there really aren’t that many stories to tell during Spring Practice this year, so there are a fair amount of repeating by different writers.

Have you heard? There’s competition for the kicking duties this season. As usual, not a lot. They expect it to go down to the wire. Not much on Connor Lee, and plenty of recap of David Abdul’s last few years.

The depth chart that comes out of Spring Practice will be written in pencil, to give plenty of opportunities to the incoming freshmen and 2 JUCOs.

Pittsburgh head coach Dave Wannstedt wants to give incoming freshmen a chance to compete for starting jobs in training camp before finalizing his depth chart.

“I probably won’t do that until two weeks before the season begins,” Wannstedt said. “The best guys will play.”

He said he expects to have a workable depth chart ready for the annual Blue-Gold game on Saturday at Heinz Field
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“I think that we’re still doing a little bit of experimenting with some players and moving them around,” Wannstedt said. “But that’s probably going to be a work in progress until a week or two weeks before that opener.

“We’ve got to continue to evaluate and create a real sense of competition to have every player go out and play as good as they’re capable of playing. But we are ahead of last year, at least from a coaching standpoint, in knowing what our players can do.”

Most of the kids will be here for the summer.

Wannstedt said at least 23 of the 25 incoming freshmen have enrolled for classes during the summer semester.

“We (won’t be) practicing, but at least it gives them an opportunity to get on campus, and be running, lifting and training with our players,” Wannstedt said. “That’s a big advantage.”

It is expected that many of the rookies will battle for starting jobs right out of the chute. The coaching staff already has decided which freshmen will be slotted for which positions.

Tamarcus Porter, for example, will be a wideout instead of a defensive back. Dorin Dickerson, the multi-dimensional crown jewel of the class, will begin his career as a receiver.

“Or tailback … or quarterback,” Wannstedt said with a laugh.

Duquesne High grad Elijah Fields told the coaches he wants to start at receiver. But, Wannstedt noted, the depth chart is getting awfully crowded at that spot.

So, it’s a good bet that Fields will start his career as a defensive back?

“It, uh … we’ll see,” Wannstedt said, grinning.

This notebook article also repeats the now common refrain that last year had too many players with their own agendas that hurt the team. Got to admit, I’m getting real sick of hearing that excuse. Wonder if the beat reporters who keep writing about it realize it makes them look like they helped cover that up from being reported or they were incompetently unaware of it?

It won’t be Fairfield that is Associate Head Coach Barry Rohrssen’s first head coaching gig.

Fairfield University has offered its vacant men’s basketball coaching job to Boston College assistant Ed Cooley, according to a source familiar with the situation.

FoxSports.com has reported that Cooley has accepted the job, and that a news conference will be held Tuesday at 11 a.m. to officially introduce him as the Stags’ new coach. Officials at Fairfield had not returned calls to the Connecticut Post Saturday night confirming that Cooley had accepted the job. According to a source, Fairfield athletic director Gene Doris and the search committee had finished meeting on Saturday and decided to offer the job to Cooley. Other candidates who had been rumored to be in the running were Boston College assistant Bill Coen, UConn assistant Tom Moore and Pittsburgh assistant Barry Rohrssen. Another source said that Larry Shyatt, a Florida assistant, was a finalist for the job. Shyatt’s name had not commonly come up in speculation as a job candidate.

Rohrssen had been the front-runner, and Coen was supposedly their other choice. News stories, though, indicated Coen bombed his interview, and Fairfield just decided to take a look at Cooley who wowed them in the interviews.

Fairfield University is in Fairfield, CT (go figure) which is just about 50 miles or so from NYC. So while they definitely recruit very strongly from NYC area, Cooley had more ties that spread throughout the New England area for recruiting as well.

I’m not sure if the Manhattan job opening and the potential interest in Rohrssen made them change their minds, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

Pitt finally has a press release regarding Maggie Dixon. The funeral is set for Tuesday in North Hollywood.

The Dixons have asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to Notre Dame High School or the Army Athletic Fund. Arrangements for Notre Dame High School can be made by contacting Sharon Marciniak at 818-933-3600 or 13645 Riverside Dr., Sherman Oaks, CA 91423. Donations to the Army Athletic Fund can be made by contacting Matt Borman at 845-938-2322 or 639 Howard Road, West Point, NY 10996.

“The entire University of Pittsburgh community shares the Dixon family’s deep sense of loss,” Pitt chancellor Mark Nordenberg said. “We applauded Maggie Dixon’s successes when she was an assistant coach at DePaul, we shared in the joy of her magical season at Army, and we now mourn her passing. Maggie was not only an exceptional basketball coach. She was a warm, energetic, upbeat person, and she will be sorely missed.”

“Maggie Dixon was truly an inspiring example,” Pitt athletic director Jeff Long said. “She was bright and driven and always had a kind, welcoming smile. Those qualities helped her achieve so very much at a young age. Maggie embodied what is so great about the coaching profession. She has left a wonderful legacy with the many people and student-athletes she touched. We share the Dixon family’s grief and pray for their comfort during this difficult time.”

Everyone is still trying to figure this out. The cause is known.

Almost everyone has had an arrhythmia — a sensation that the heart is fluttering or skipping a beat — and it usually isn’t a problem.

But, sometimes, the heart keeps fluttering with lethal consequences, which doctors believe happened Thursday to Maggie Dixon, sister of Pitt men’s basketball coach James Dixon.

Cardiac arrhythmias occur when the heart beats chaotically — often at 300 beats per minute, rather than the standard 70 — and blood can’t reach other organs and the brain.

If victims’ hearts aren’t jolted back to normal within a few minutes, using either an electrical defibrillator or cardiopulmonary resuscitation, they die.
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It is rare for young people to die of arrhythmias, though slightly more common in athletes because physical activity causes their hearts to speed up and slow down, Ward said.

Dixon, 28, was coach of the Army women’s basketball team and was physically active. Preliminary autopsy results show that she had an enlarged heart. That condition likely caused an arrhythmia, said Dr. Christopher Bonnet, head of electrophysiology at Allegheny General Hospital, North Side.

Of almost 40,000 annual deaths directly attributed to arrhythmias, less than .5 percent of the victims are people age 25 to 29, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

From 60 to 75 percent of the people who died of an arrhythmia had a genetic predisposition, according to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

But by all accounts, there was no genetic history towards this. It seems there was nothing.

Mitral valve prolapse involves a bending back of the mitral valve toward the upper chamber of the heart, said Dr. John R. Ward, chief of cardiology at Mercy Hospital’s Heart Institute. It is common in tall, thin women and generally is not associated with serious health problems, he said.

Ms. Dixon likely had an arrhythmia in a lower chamber of the heart that kept it from pumping effectively and led to decreased blood flow to her brain, Dr. Ward said.

What might have caused her enlarged heart is unclear, he said, though it could have resulted from a number of factors, including a virus.

Medical tests might have identified a problem before she collapsed, he said, but there would have been little reason to conduct them in the absence of symptoms or a family history of similar problems.

None of it helps make any sense. She played competitive basketball. Went through the rigors and stress of coaching for a season. Then suffers the attack while visiting with a friend? Stories abound in the locals, the NY Times, Washington Post, and other place.

Up in New York, near West Point the local paper has several pieces. This collects various quotes from Maggie Dixon, and others about her. A timeline of her time at Army. There were rumors that schools like Purdue were targeting Dixon to take over their program but she wasn’t interested.

Maggie Dixon stopped by Army athletic director Kevin Anderson’s office on Wednesday and informed him that several schools were trying to lure her away from the Academy.

Dixon told Anderson not to worry. She had no plans on leaving the program. A day later, shockingly, Dixon was gone.

“It was Maggie’s big heart and love that finally gave out,” said a teary-eyed Anderson during Dixon’s memorial service at Chapel of The Most Holy Trinity yesterday. “God took her to coach for his team and you can’t fight that fact.”

The chapel, not surprisingly, was packed.

Superintendent Lt. Gen. William J. Lennox Jr. is the most powerful person here on post.

He is intense and commands respect. His demeanor is often stone-faced. But there was Lennox yesterday, holding back tears, as he spoke to mourners gathered inside Chapel of The Most Holy Trinity at the U.S. Military Academy for a memorial service for Army women’s basketball coach Maggie Dixon.

Lennox paused for a moment, composing himself, as several players cried in pews right in front of him. Then he spoke directly to Dixon’s parents, Jim and Marge, and said: “Mr. and Mrs. Dixon, I really don’t think we lost Maggie. We have 20 more Maggie Dixons (her players). They are tough and compassionate like her and we will be developing more Maggie Dixons in the future.”
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Lennox’s heartfelt tribute was one of several during the 45-minute service yesterday. Dixon’s players and peers spoke of her outgoing personality, her infectious smile and how her energy produced the most from her team. She touched so many lives in just more than six months at the Academy.

“Coach Dixon always asked us how we would react to adversity,” Army senior guard Megan Vrabel said. “Now, we are facing adversity like never before, but we are going to keep her fire ignited. We are fighters to the end just like coach Dixon.”

Added Army athletic director Kevin Anderson: “Maggie Dixon will live with these young ladies because what she shared with them in seven months they couldn’t get in a lifetime.”

More than 500 mourners, including many cadets, attended the service. The Dixons, including Maggie’s older brother, Jamie, the head men’s basketball coach at the University of Pittsburgh, sat in the front row of the chapel. In front of them, near the altar, were several pictures of Maggie Dixon and her team and the Patriot League trophy the Black Knights won last month.

On the cover of the memorial service program was a picture of Dixon, left arm raised, celebrating Army’s Patriot League championship win.

The paper has its own guest book that people signed (actually it appears to be the same one the P-G has), and a photo gallery of Maggie Dixon and the events surrounding the announcement and the memorial service.

Finally there is the column from Andy Katz who seems willing to let a veil fall away in a case like this.

I remember the first time I met Maggie. I was sitting with Jamie and Gonzaga coach Mark Few at a restaurant on Rush Street in Chicago after watching the day’s events at the NBA pre-draft camp last June. Maggie, then an assistant at DePaul, came to meet us. A tall, striking woman, she came upon us sitting at an outside table. She was engaging. She had an infectious smile. And she was so proud to be sitting next to her brother, as was he to be near her.

I’ve spoken to Jamie countless times on the phone for years, from his time at Hawaii, then Northern Arizona, and now Pitt. We have a strong working relationship. He’s a good friend, something that’s OK to say even though I cover him and the sport. He knows I have a job to do and there are times when he doesn’t agree with everything I write or say.

There are times when pretending to be objective just doesn’t work.