Meg Dixon picked up a majority of her basketball gear and threw it in the trash. Her jersey would have met the same fate as her other discarded equipment if she didn’t have to give it back to UMass Boston.

It was basically an unceremonious final goodbye to a basketball career robbed by injuries. The toll of sustaining a torn ACL and a fractured back while at Hanover High was painful enough, but tearing her ACL, MCL and meniscus, this time in her right knee, in late December 2018 during her sophomore season with the Beacons pushed her to this point. 

“My basketball shorts, my shirts, my ankle brace, anything you can think of, basketball wise, I threw out because I didn’t want to do it again,” Dixon said. “I didn’t want to have all the negativity and the injuries and feeling like when I work so hard and nothing’s working for me. I just needed it out of my life.”

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Three monumental injuries in the span of five years left a scar on Dixon’s standout career. She suffered her first ACL and meniscus tear as a sophomore at Hanover and a year later, unknowingly played for two weeks with fractures in her back. 

“I’d be playing and I’d get shocks of pain down my legs and I’d have to stop playing,” said Dixon of the back injury.

Dixon, a three-time Patriot League All-Star, persevered to return for her senior year, helping lead Hanover to a 19-2 record and a Division 3 South semifinal appearance in 2017. 

Once at UMass Boston, Dixon’s sharpshooting ability earned her a role in the rotation as a freshman before being elevated into the starting lineup the following season.

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Dixon started the first 10 games of that season, but it would be nearly three years until she played again for the Beacons. Early on in a road tilt against Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Dixon went up for a layup and as she came back down to the floor she felt her knee go backward.

Down on the court, Dixon already knew the severity of her injury after experiencing it before. 

“I remember when I fell and my old UMass-Boston coach (Kris Baugh) came running over to me, I looked at her and I was like, ‘It’s torn,’” Dixon said. “You could see the sadness in her eyes because I think she knew that I knew I was right.”

Dixon was engulfed in sadness, too, but held it in until she got back to the trainer’s room, where the emotions poured out of her. A visit to the doctor’s days later confirmed what Dixon expected. 

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Dixon got ready to endure another surgery and six to eight months of rehabilitation, but this time it was different. Doubt if she could make another triumphant return flooded her and Dixon began to believe her career might have come to a premature conclusion

“Once I got this second ACL surgery done, basketball, I thought, wasn’t really in the cards for me anymore because I thought maybe my body couldn’t really handle it,” Dixon said. 

Three major injuries didn’t just batter Dixon’s body, but also impacted her mental health. Playing basketball was her outlet and safe haven, and it was taken away from her again at that moment.

Dixon also couldn’t suppress the ongoing question in her mind as she struggled to understand the position she was in. 

“It was very hard to constantly feel like, ‘Jeez, why is it always happening to me?’” Dixon said. “I work really hard and I think I pride myself on my work ethic, so when you work that hard and stuff like this does happen to you, it’s really, really draining.”

Dixon said recovery from her second ACL surgery took longer after it didn’t go as planned and to this day, she doesn’t have feeling in her shin. That played a role in her decision to sit out the entire 2019-20 season and the thought of coming back just to be sidelined again with another injury wasn’t something she wanted to deal with. 

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“I had a lot of stuff just going on personally that I needed to work on,” Dixon said. “I just didn’t know if playing basketball full-time at school was going to be the best fit for me and to possibly have another injury, that, also, was in my head.”

But what Dixon, and frankly nobody else, realized is she would have no option to play last year with the season canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Dixon hadn’t really thought about playing collegiate basketball again until the first day of classes came around in September.

Dixon strolled into UMass Boston’s Clark Athletic Center where friends asked her if she would play for the Beacons this season. She told them she hadn’t decided yet and then her teammate told her about UMass Boston’s new coach, Heather Jacobs.

Once meeting Jacobs, a Stoughton native who coached at Division I Wagner University for five seasons, Dixon was close to being fully on-board with coming back. She just had to make a quick phone call before solidifying her decision. 

“I instantly really liked the way she was holding herself and speaking about basketball,” Dixon said. “I called my mom and I actually asked her, ‘Do you think this will be a good idea?’ She said, ‘You sound so happy about it, I think you should go for it.’ I decided then that I was going to play basketball.”

While Dixon was immediately impressed with Jacobs, the coach formed a high opinion of Dixon right away as well. 

“She’s super mature and she definitely had a confidence to her that was evident even before I saw her step on the floor,” Jacobs said. “She had been away (from the game) for a little bit, but in our early conversations she communicated how much the game mattered to her and the work that she had put in in the summer.”

Dixon kept preparing for her comeback and on Nov. 8, against Brandeis University, Dixon stepped onto the court with the Beacons for the first time after missing two-and-a-half seasons. 

There was no storybook beginning to Dixon’s return, as she struggled to find her scoring touch to start her senior season. The next game against New England College wasn’t better as Dixon shot a combined 3-for-21 from the floor in her first two contests.

Dixon felt herself playing nervous and hesitant with a knee brace on her right knee serving as a constant reminder of what could happen at any moment.

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“The majority of it was definitely mental,” Dixon said. “Once you play basketball to the level I think I’ve always been playing at, it’s not really the rust, it’s definitely the mental state of getting into that game zone. Mentally, it was hard. I remember stepping onto the court and being like, ‘Oh wow, I’m playing again.’ It was definitely a big shock.

“For people to see me back on the court, I know that was also a big thing. I felt like I had a lot of pressure that people were waiting for me to do something. That was tough because I obviously didn’t perform to what I am capable of for the first two games.”

Dixon said she had a conversation with her mother about all the weight she felt on her shoulders and made sure to keep her preparation the same. She also decided starting with UMass Boston’s third game she would no longer play with her knee brace.

In that first game without a knee brace against Mitchell College, it was as if Dixon was set free. Dixon returned to the form she displayed prior to her second ACL injury by netting a career-high 28 points – she didn’t discover her point total until after the game – along with recording seven rebounds and five assists. 

“I was just happy that I felt good out there,” Dixon said, “and I felt good playing with my team and my team looked happy to be out there.”

Dixon added: “I was excited to finally be in the rhythm. I felt like it was a new Megan but it was also this old Megan and I was happy to be out there.”

That was the jumping-off point to what has been an incredible season for Dixon. She leads the Beacons with 16.8 points and 9.0 rebounds per game, while being tied for first on the team in assists and steals.

Jacobs hasn’t shied away from giving Dixon a star player’s workload, either. Dixon had a four-game stretch where she was on the court for all but one minute.

“Her confidence and her preparation gives me the confidence in her, ultimately,” Jacobs said. “It’s somebody that you know that they know what’s going on and you know they’re going to do whatever it takes.”

In those early-season conversations with Dixon, Jacobs said the 5-foot-10 combo guard was “adamant” she was more than just a shooter, and Dixon proved it too. Dixon put together a monster performance against Wellesley College, where she compiled 24 points and nearly doubled her previous career-high with 19 rebounds to power UMass-Boston to its first win of the season. 

“She’s got another gear, another level in her that maybe some other people that she’s playing against don’t (have) sometimes,” Jacobs said. 

For Dixon, who has scored 20 or more points in four games, there’s no surprise to what she is accomplishing on the court. It’s just a byproduct of a tenacious work ethic, according to Dixon, which is why it was so difficult to deal with the injuries due to all the effort she had exerted. 

Dixon is playing more freely now, but there comes times when she thinks of the past. She has learned to push those thoughts aside. 

“The big injuries that I’ve gotten in the past they do get my brain every once in a while, but I try not to think about it because at the end of the day, if something like that’s going to happen, it’s going to happen and it has nothing really to do with me,” Dixon said. “I’m just going to play basketball until I have to stop.”

After the injuries wore down Dixon both physically and mentally, she said her mental state has completely flipped compared to what it once was. There’s a joy to her game and she’s attacking each day, having no regrets. 

She’s thankful to have the sport once taken away from her back in her life. For Dixon, she’s got her safe haven back. 

“I’m so happy that I’m in such a positive mental state right now and I decided to play basketball because I know it was the right decision for me,” Dixon said.