STINNETT – There’s a good chance Dixie Reiswig won’t be able to play one of her beloved sports when she begins her senior year next month at West Texas High and the Lady Comanches take the volleyball court.
It’s even possible that Reiswig might not be able to attend classes, at least not every day. Saturday afternoon at the WT High Events Center, though, Reiswig’s presence was felt everywhere.
Prior to the start of the school year next year, the gym was busy late in the morning for a rather normal activity associated with PE class, dodge ball. Only this time, it wasn’t a mere contest.
The event, dubbed Dodge Ball For Dixie, was a benefit for Reiswig, who earlier this month was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. A total of 16 teams entered the event, with the $100 entry fee for each team going toward Reiswig’s treatment.
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Reiswig herself was there with members of her family to acknowledge the support of the community.
“It means everything,” Reiswig said. “The diagnosis itself was so scary. There’s hard days and even harder nights, but with everybody behind me just seeing how they came together is just so relieving.”
Reiswig won’t be starting treatment for the next couple of weeks, but financially, WT High has tried to help her get out in front of her misfortune. Cody Wolf, who took over as the school’s girls head basketball coach at the end of the 2024-25 school year, thought an early act as head coach would be to help Reiswig.
Ironically, basketball is one sport Reiswig hasn’t played in high school, as she’s lettered in volleyball, softball and track. Still, that didn’t keep Wolf from coming up the idea of using volleyball as a fundraiser.
“It’s always easy to get people wherever there’s competition involved so whatever we could do to raise money for it,” Wolf said. “Dodge ball and Dixie both start with D so it was catchy. Anything like that the community usually gets behind it.”
The ‘D’ theme carried over into the competition as well, as the team which won was known as Dawgin 4 Dicky.
Things came together quickly as Reiswig was only diagnosed with her condition a few weeks ago. Wolf said only five teams were involved at first before people in Stinnett and other areas decided to step up the process.
“In the last two days it jumped up to 16 teams,” Wolf said. “I was really happy with that.”
Area churches got involved in the day, as churches not only from Borger but from as far away as Oklahoma City brought teams to Stinnett. There were six players on each team, standard for team dodge ball, and while some were entirely male or female, others were co-ed.
In some cases, there were kids in fourth grade going up against their parents, but at the center of it all was Reiswig, even if for a life-threatening reason. It didn’t appear as if that would be necessary until somebody noticed a change in her appearance.
“A friend noticed a lump on her neck and we went to the doctor and they immediately tested for mono or strep and it came out negative,” said Reiswig’s mother, Rosio Lira. “So we did a sonogram and that’s when they found it was lymphoma. It all happened in one day and we got sent to BSA (Hospital in Amarillo) for a biopsy.”
At first, Lira thought her daughter might be suffering from a skin condition and had been sweating at night. A biopsy said otherwise.
Reiswig sports a prominent scar on her lower right neck from the biopsy as a reminder of what she’s been through and will continue to experience in her fight against lymphoma.
She said she never felt sick prior to her trip to the hospital. Reiswig was an emergency admittance into BSA on the same day she went to have the lump checked.
“It’s terrifying,” Reiswig said. “You hear cancer and you think it’s like a death sentence. It’s overwhelming. After a little bit I was positive. I had a really rough couple of days and then I saw everybody come together and it pushed me to be stronger. I’m ready to take it on.”
Since Reiswig is only 17 and her immune system is strong, her chances of beating the disease are excellent. She’s scheduled to start chemotherapy within the next month.
“It’s one of the most treatable cancers out there,” Reiswig said. “Hodgkin’s is a lot better to have than Non-Hodgkin’s so I was lucky with that. I’m stage two and none of it went past my diaphragm and my bone marrow came back clean too so my odds are looking really good.”
There are still financial obstacles for Reiswig and her family to deal with in treating her disease. Saturday’s event was the first fundraiser, but only the start of that process.
Lira is grateful for how Wolf got the community to step up to the plate for her daughter to kick off things.
“It’s hard when you’re going through that and you’re worried about how you’re going to pay for everything,” Lira said. “It’s very expensive, but (Wolf) reached out to me and wanted to do a fundraiser for Dixie and I said sure, so he set it all up and everybody showed up for Dixie. I’m so thankful that people love my daughter so much to show up here and donate. They’ve done so much for us already.”
It’s estimated that Reiswig’s treatment could last about six months, which would likely go into February of next year. She has no immediate plans regarding her volleyball season and even how often she’ll be able to attend classes her senior year.
“When I start treatment, they’ll figure out how sick it makes me,” Reiswig said. “They said I may not even want to go to school.”
The drug cocktails Reiswig takes will be reduced over the months and she’s hopeful she’ll be able to participate in athletics next spring. If the cancer cells aren’t sufficiently shrunk after six months, she might have to undergo radiation treatment.
Reiswig doesn’t appear to be outwardly ill and her attitude indicates someone whose health is positive, as she hasn’t been diagnosed with any other related ailments.
Wolf, who is in his second year at WT High after he was an assistant to Andy Copley on the girls team last year, got to know Reiswig then. It was an easy decision to pull together an initial fundraiser.
“As soon as we found out about her diagnosis I was probably as annoying to (the family) as anything,” Wolf said. “I told them I needed to help and they were open to anything I could do. They’re very gracious. We’ll definitely have one or two nights where the concession for volleyball games will help out and this is definitely not the end of trying to help out Dixie for sure.”
Lira said that Stinnett is also planning a cornhole tournament as a fundraiser for Reiswig, and that the owner of a snow cone stand in Borger is holding a day to raise money for treatments. Those are just a couple of the benefits which are planned.
Reiswig hasn’t publicly displayed any self-pity about her plight. She’s just glad she’s got a chance to beat it, and in an ironic twist, she was planning on attending Amarillo College and studying radiology.
“You should really be grateful for everything that you have,” Reiswig said. “It really opens your eyes and shows you how quickly things can change. In a matter of a couple of days my whole world was different. I’ll never be the same again but it’s changed me in a positive way.”