“Nothing against Boston, but I always ask why it took so long for her to be remembered, She was in the Olympics, and she was an NCAA National Champion. What more could she have done? I do have to say though that we are grateful that we’re doing this now.”
“I don’t know how to explain it now, but Medina didn’t just affect Boston, or Massachusetts or NCAA Women’s basketball, but really she transformed women’s basketball across the county.”
-Zack Dixon (top) Robin Dixon quoted at the dedication of basketball courts in their sister’s name at the Walker Street playground in Mattapan on August 20, 2022.
In the winter of 1980-81, Greater Boston was the center of the high school basketball universe as dozens of college coaches purchased road maps and A-Z street directories to trace their way to gymnasiums in Wayland, Brockton, Lincoln-Sudbury, and Bedford while scouting America’s top two senior prospects at Cambridge Rindge and Latin.
One was a seven-foot colossus, the most heavily recruited big man since Ralph Sampson, and the other a 6’ 3” young lady, contacted by over 200 colleges and universities, whose multidimensional star shone with a light that led one sportswriter to describe her as nothing less than a female Magic Johnson. Patrick Ewing and classmate Medina Dixon shared a championship pedigree at Cambridge Rindge and Latin as well as the roughshod experience of having survived a barrage of racial epithets directed their way in the years following Boston’s busing crisis.
How great a player was Medina Dixon? In a 1985 story headlined “Incomparable” Bob Ryan wrote of Dixon,
“Old Dominion forward Tracy Claxton sees Medina Dixon ahead of the pack, and she does exactly what Ennis Whatley would do if he were to see Michael Jordan in the same situation, which is to thrown the ball in the general vicinity of the rim. The pass is not exactly on target, however, the ball is thrown a bit behind Dixon’s head. Not to worry. With the consummate mind-body response that only the great athletes have, Medina reaches back, catches the ball, pumps once, and lays it in. It is a feat anyone from Michael Jordan to Michael Dunleavy would be proud to call his own. It is, in the opinion of all who are familiar with her game, pure Medina. Even high-level women basketball players often have somewhat clunky moments. But Medina Dixon is different. She plays like a man, and in the world of women’s collegiate basketball that is not a condescending remark. Rather, it is the ultimate compliment.”
Medina Dixon’s basketball journey began in Mattapan as the second sister in a family that included eleven brothers. Her brother Zack was a star running back at Temple who enjoyed a five-year NFL career with an equal number of teams. Her brother Rob, a star basketball player at UNH who was drafted by the Washington Bullets and ended up playing professionally in Europe.
Suffice to say, Medina grew up in a household where backyard jousts with her brothers more than prepared her for the testing grounds that awaited on the playgrounds and gyms of Greater Boston. “They started playing,” she later observed, “and I started watching them. When you started to watch them, you wanted to play with them. You got to take a beating. I wanted to play with them, so I took it. I’m used to playing with boys. Boys are much faster, more physical.”
Her first mentor was the legendary Alfreda Harris, director of Roxbury’s famed Shelburne Center and coach of numerous AAU and college teams, who recalled, “I remember my friend on Norfolk Street called and told me I needed to get down here soon because there was a girl who could really play, and she was tall, and talented and was beating up on all the boys. I didn’t believe her at first, but once I saw her, it was true.”
After a year at Dorchester High, Dixon transferred to Cambridge Rindge and Latin (a move that later brought a court challenge regarding her legal guardianship which resulted in the Cambridge school forfeiting their 78-9 state championship) where she attracted national attention. In gym class she sometimes was matched against Pat Ewing, of whom she observed to Boston Globe reporter Joe Concannon, “I can score on him. I’d take him inside. He’d laugh. But he knew I couldn’t do it in a game. I really would have liked to play with the guys, but it would have been a slap in the face to the girls’ program if I had.”
Following a year at the University of South Carolina, during which their women’s program collapsed after a series of scandals (none of which involved Dixon), she transferred to Old Dominion. In Norfolk, she achieved lasting fame while leading the Monarchs to an NCAA championship in her senior year, beating Georgia by a score of 70-65. In 2011, her number 13 was retired by the university.
In the era before the WNBA, Dixon played a single pro season in Italy before embarking on a six year pro stint in Japan (where she was the first Black women’s player) capped by a final season in Russia.
Her international career saw her lead the United States to a FIBA gold medal in 1990, and bronze medals in the 1991 Pan American Games and 1992 Summer Olympics, where she was the USA’s leading scorer. Her Olympic coach, Theresa Grentz, would say of her, “We have a great relationship, and I trust her…If I had to describe her, I would say she is the best offensive rebounder in the world. She can flat-out play.”
In later life, as she battled pancreatic cancer, Dixon was recruited by her former high school teammate Sharlene Sturgis-Blake, to participate in regular Zoom sessions with former teammates and coaches. The appearance of old friends, including Patrick Ewing and boy’s coach Mike Jarvis, prompted tears as she reconnected with a community she’d left some three decades before.
Among those who reached out to Dixon was Joanne O’Callaghan, her first coach at Rindge and Latin, who recalled, “The first time I ever saw her, she blew me away. She came down the floor and she dunked the ball. It’s the first woman I’ve ever seen dunk the ball. You have to imagine what that feels like. She was just commanding.”
Her coach in her final two years in Cambridge, Terry Riggs, recounted to Boston Globe reporter Julian Benbow, “I have nothing to compare it (memories) to. To have the amount of attention that was given to this young woman at age 17, it was amazing. I remember having games at home and Pat Summitt is sitting in the gymnasium. Any given day we would have a home game, there would be scouts sitting up in the stands just watching, observing, getting stats, talking to me afterward.”
Following a campaign led by Police Superintendent. Nora Baston, Alfreda Harris, the Dixon family, City Councillor Ruthzee Louijeune, and more than 200 signatories on a neighborhood petition, the Boston Recreation Department voted unanimously to name the basketball courts at Mattapan’s Walker Park in Dixon’s honor. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu presided over a plaque unveiling ceremony held on August 20, 2022 that was attended by Dixon’s wife, family, friends, and teammates.
It was a fitting tribute that prompted her mentor Harris to remark to Julian Benbow, “Once Medina got out there, all the other players that came behind from my program, all went to major colleges and universities across the country. Some of them are coaching, some of them are assistant coaches. We put her on the map and she put us on the map.”
