'It's just changed my perspective': Field jumper Trevor Dixon uses 2023 fall as motivation

MANTUA — Trevor Dixon has made a huge leap forward to start the 2024 season.

A promising jumper as a freshman, he's already become one of Portage County's best as a sophomore — sweeping the high jump and long jump titles at the Don Faix Invitational.

Dixon's leap forward began with a jump he regrets.

You see, the reason you may not have heard of Field's star jumper is that he missed out on last year's postseason.

On the day of last year's Metro Athletic Conference Championships, Dixon went for a dunk in gym class and it all went wrong from there.

"I go up to dunk it and a kid hit my legs and I just fell," Dixon said. "I remember hitting the floor, then waking up, and they were like, 'You had a seizure.'"

A trip to the hospital followed.

Any trip to the postseason was out of the question.

"I thought I was going to go far, so I was really mad," Dixon said. "I was just mad at myself for, 'Why would you just go try to dunk it like for no reason when it's the league meet?' So, yeah, I was mad at myself mostly."

There's a funny thing about anger and frustration.

Sometimes, it makes for the best kind of motivation.

Thus far this season, the Record-Courier Athlete of the Week has raised his game to an entirely new level. In a sport in which marks typically improve massively as the season progresses, Dixon already reached his top high jump total from a year ago when he cleared 6-feet, 1-inch in Mantua. To put that mark in further perspective, it took a 6-2 to qualify for state in Division II last season.

"It's just changed my perspective to make me want it more," Dixon said. "I just want to go to state more, just like I did in middle school. Just get back to the same stage and do really well."

Trevor Dixon a top talent for Field

The talent was obvious.

"When you go for, what, 60 years of middle school track, the highest jumper we ever had was 5-8, and you go 6-0, there's a four-inch difference," Falcons coach Ed Conroy said. "He beat the school record by four inches and that's insane."

After he started jumping in the seventh grade, Dixon captured the Metro Athletic Conference title and placed third in the state as an eighth grader.

"All these were indications that, yeah, he's going to be a good high school jumper," Conroy said. "It would be crazy to not know that."

Dixon had emerged as one of the top middle school jumpers in the state barely a year after his friend, Cedric Martin, convinced him to give track and field a try. Once there, a coach figured Dixon ought to give jumping a try given his basketball background.

"From then, it has just skyrocketed," Dixon said. "I love it now."

Dixon is committed now, too.

Last year, Dixon split his time between track and field and AAU basketball. Per Conroy, "he missed as many meets as he was in." Between the missed meets and practices and the injury he suffered on the day of the league meet, Dixon never had the chance to achieve his full potential.

"You want to peak them at the key times of the year," Conroy said. "He was never peaked."

This year, Dixon has focused on his jumps.

"He's become a dedicated athlete, not only on the jumps, but in the weight room, and as far as any kind of exercise that we're teaching them," Conroy said. "Any kind of band work, any kind of jump roping, he's buying in and he's doing all the extras to make you a good jumper. He's doing more than just jumping in pits."

That work certainly paid off in the pits of Jack Lambert Stadium.

In the high jump, Dixon overcame an early strike apiece at 5-9 and 5-10 to secure the title, clearing 6-0 on his third and final attempt, before nabbing 6-1 on his second try.

"It's kind of like I know I can hit it, but at the same time I'm a little stressed because I know if I don't then I'm out, like, it's over," Dixon said. "But I'm mostly calm, just knowing that I jumped it before, I jumped it last year, jumped it in middle school, so, yeah, I just knew."

In the long jump, Dixon didn't even know he was in second place entering his final attempt. He wasn't in second any longer after hitting 19-9¾ on his last leap to earn the long jump title.

"I didn't know that," Dixon said. "I was just jumping, just having fun. I just come out here to have fun."

Dixon was the Field MVP at the Newton Falls Tiger Invitational.

If the Don Faix Invitational gave out a Field MVP award, Dixon surely would have won that, too.

He's jumping forward and he's not looking back.

"He's doing the work he needs to do in the fieldhouse," Conroy said. "He's doing the work he needs to do at home even, and of course the experience will come throughout the season to hopefully put him where he needs to be at the end of the postseason."