Women's Basketball
- Title:
- Assistant Coach
Leah Frazier Dixon will begin her second season as Paul Nixon's top assistant in 2008-09.
Frazier Dixon works primarily with the post players at Columbia – the Lions return five post players taller than 6-0 for the upcoming season.
The former Tennessee Tech standout came to Columbia as an assistant coach in May 2007 after serving as an assistant coach at Rider during the 2006-07 season.
Prior to coaching at Rider, Frazier Dixon was the head varsity girls’ basketball coach at Washburn High School in Minneapolis, Minn. She has spent several years in the Minneapolis school system working as a middle-school teacher while serving a number of non-profit organizations, including founding the Frazier Foundation. The foundation works to provide opportunities to female athletes to earn college scholarships and gain employment during and after college.
Frazier Dixon was a two-year starter and four-year letterwinner at Tennessee Tech from 1983-87 and continued her basketball career with coaching positions at the AAU, high school and college level including year-long stints at Minnesota and Austin Peay shortly after graduating from Tennessee Tech.
“I’m thrilled to be working with Paul Nixon,” said Frazier Dixon. “There is an opportunity here to do something really special in the Ivy League.”
A native of Minneapolis, Minn., Frazier Dixon has three children – Chelsea, 19, Michael, 12 and Monet, 9.
Paul Nixon on Frazier Dixon:
Adding Leah to our coaching staff has helped our program on so many levels. She is an outstanding coach but she is an even more impressive professional, career woman. After a stellar career as a player, she has become quite accomplished off the court. The non-profit organization she started in her hometown community of Minneapolis has provided opportunities for scores of young women to better their futures through basketball, academics and life skills training. Her life experiences allow her to provide our players with a mature, successful role model who will help them grow in ways that reach well beyond the basketball arena.
At the same time, I don’t want to underestimate the impact she’s going to have on the basketball side of our program. Leah is one of the most talented recruiters in the country who has experienced the recruiting process from every vantage point: as a player herself, as a parent with her daughter, Chelsea, as a high school coach, as an AAU/club team coach and of course, as a college coach.
These perspectives allow her to relate to everyone involved in the process and this will give us an advantage as we compete for some of the most gifted young women in the nation. Our current players, particularly our young posts, are going to benefit tremendously from Leah’s experiences as a player who competed at the highest level herself. I couldn’t be more thrilled to have added such a quality coach, but an even better person to my coaching staff.
