‘I knew the player that I could be’
Love of the game keeps Dixon coming back after injuries to both of her knees
More than a decade ago, Taleah Dixon and her youth basketball teammates often provided the entertainment during halftimes of Loyola Maryland women’s basketball games. Dixon, now 22, remembers standing on the court inside Reitz Arena in Baltimore and soaking it all in.
“I remember pulling out a sheet when I was younger and writing that Loyola was my dream school,” she said. “It was Loyola and the University of Maryland. The dreams changed when I got older and I started to have more realistic goals, but Loyola always felt like the place to be.”
That vision became a reality when Dixon chose the Greyhounds over Howard in October 2017 as a senior at McDonogh. And Loyola has benefited from that decision.
In her freshman year, Dixon earned a spot on the Patriot League’s All-Rookie team. Last winter, she enjoyed career highs in points (10.6), assists (2.5) and steals (1.2) per game.
Through three games this season, Dixon has enjoyed a solid start. The graduate student shooting guard ranks second on the team in scoring at 10.3 points per game behind sophomore forward Alexa Therien’s 17.7 and steals at 1. She’s also third in rebounds at 5.7 and is tied for second in assists at 1.7 for the Greyhounds (1-2).
Dixon compiled the first double-double of her career with an 11-point, 10-rebound performance in Sunday afternoon’s 61-47 win against UMBC at Reitz Arena.
In her second year as head coach, Danielle O’Banion said she has learned to lean on Dixon’s steadying presence.
“I would say there’s a sense of comfort for all of us,” she said. “Our team is confident that she knows what the right thing to do is and that she will do it to the best of her ability and that the basketball will go where it needs to go when she has it.”
Dixon’s path to this stage in her career is a
tale of setbacks and comebacks. Just weeks after completing her sophomore season at McDonogh for which she was named to The Baltimore Sun’s All-Metro first team, she tore the ACL in her left knee in April 2016. Dixon rehabilitated her knee in time to return for her junior year, but admittedly “did not have a great year.”
“It was difficult,” she recalled. “The mental aspect of it is very hard to come back from because a lot of people tell you that you won’t be the same. It’s just hard because your body wants to move.”
After a senior campaign during which she reached the 1,000-point milestone for the Eagles and earned a spot on The Sun’s All-Metro first team again, Dixon carried her success to Loyola where as a freshman, she averaged 9.7 points and 2.5 rebounds and added 42 assists and 29 steals in 2018-19.
But in the team’s first preseason practice before the beginning of the 2019-20 season, Dixon tore the ACL in her right knee. Unlike the first tear, however, she approached the second injury with a different mindset.
“Right away, I just knew that it was time to go to the athletic training room and do work to get ready for surgery,” she said. “And afterwards, I knew what I needed to do to get back on the court, and I knew the mental recovery that I needed.”
As devastating as the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 was for many, Dixon called it a “blessing in disguise” because it gave her the ability to return to her family’s home in Baltimore and strengthen her body.
This past June, Dixon underwent another operation to clean up the meniscus in her left knee. Considering her injury history, she acknowledged a few bleak moments when she considered walking away from basketball.
“I was like, ‘Why me?’ ” she said. “But I have full faith in God. I just knew that whatever happens, it happens for a reason. And I just love the game, and I want to stay around it.”
Groomed primarily as a shooting guard, Dixon was asked by O’Banion before the 202122 campaign to adjust her game to add some point guard duties. Dixon accepted the task, and O’Banion said she appreciated the immediate support from the senior trio of Dixon and guards Laryn Edwards and Devyne Newman. (Edwards and Newman have since graduated.)
“I know we asked a lot of her last year to be our go-to perimeter scorer,” O’Banion said. “Not that it was a new role for her, but the ways in which we asked her to be a leader on the floor, we put her in situations where she could be almost like a point guard to manage decision-making and assists, and she rose to the challenge.”
As gratifying as last season’s numbers would seem to be, Dixon said she wasn’t completely satisfied.
“It was kind of like a I-knew-I-could-do-it thing,” she said. “It looked a little bit rewarding, but at the end of the day, I knew the player that I could be. So it was just nice to see that all of the hard work and all of the injuries I had to endure, they ended up helping me doing something great at the end.”
Having graduated with a bachelor’s in journalism and currently studying for an MBA, Dixon said one of her final objectives is to help Loyola capture either a Patriot League regular season or tournament title — either of which would be a first in the program’s history.
“The numbers will speak for themselves if I do well and have 12 points per game, five assists per game, two steals per game. That’s all great, but at the end of the day, it’s really frustrating to not pull out the wins. So the goal is to win. The numbers don’t mean anything at the end of the day for me.”