Completed Event: Cross Country versus USATF U20 Cross Country Championships on December 6, 2025 , , NTS
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Final
Cross Country
vs USATF U20 Cross Country Championships
Dixon's Teammates Rally in Aftermath of Wildfire
1/21/2022 2:54:00 PM | Cross Country
by Kyle Williams, GoDuke the Magazine Online
The week lodged between Christmas and New Years Eve is often thought of as one to relax and celebrate with family. A way to remove yourself from the stresses of regular life, and for student-athletes, a chance to decompress and recuperate ahead of the spring season.
However, for thousands of families residing in the suburban areas north of Denver, Colorado, Dec. 30, 2021 offered no such comfort. The wildfire that swept through the highly populated communities was among the most destructive in the state's history and forced many to evacuate with a mix of fear and confusion. Such an event was highly unusual in this part of Colorado, especially so late in the calendar year.
Countless houses, still decorated for the holiday festivities, were emptied before being engulfed in the rapidly spreading blaze. One of which was the home of Will Dixon, a senior on the Duke cross country and track & field team, who was at his parents' residence in Superior, Colorado, when the wildfire began that Thursday morning. Just days earlier, the three of them returned from a family gathering in Texas, and when his father, Rick, and mother, Ann, went skiing on the 30th, Will opted to stay home and continue rehabbing a minor foot injury.Â
A few short hours later, he got a call from his mom.
"I was just sitting on my couch watching a movie and I didn't get any of the alerts," he recalled. "I was watching Netflix, so none of the notifications were popping up on the screen. And then, I get this call at around 1 p.m. saying, 'Hey, you've got to get out of the house,' and that's kind of where everything hit the fan."
Will's first reaction, like many in the area, was disbelief. He even remembers looking out the back door and seeing nothing out of the ordinary. But after trying to tell her everything was alright, she convinced him to check outside the front of the house.
"I look out front and there's just this big plume of smoke coming."
What Will woke up to as a "totally normal day," during a break from school that he was ready to spend unwinding, had now turned on its head. The next two hours of his life escalated from uncertainty to scramble-mode, beginning with him stepping outside and seeing the reactions of his neighbors.
"I walked out the front and everybody was kind of like looking around at each other like, 'What are we doing? How is this fire that's still several miles away going to affect us?'"
Shortly after going back inside, Will heard the sound of local police banging on his doors, alerting him and everyone on the street of the situation's severity. Though he knew the immediate move was to pack as many valuable items as he could into his car and evacuate, Will first had to tend to a more difficult task – tracking down the two family cats.
"One of them is totally trusting of us – we've had him since he was really little," he said. "But the other one we got, she's a rescue, so she lived on the street for three or four years before we got her. She's really friendly if you know her, but the police banging on the door scared her, so I was just running around the house and I couldn't find her. At first it was like, 'Okay, this fire is probably still not too close,' but after 30 or 40 minutes of looking you're thinking, 'Oh god, I've got to get going.'"
Eventually, he loaded the car with all the necessities that would fit – his parents' work computers, piles of clothes, some pictures off the walls and of course, the cats.
By the time Will pulled out of the driveway, Rick and Ann had found a hotel that was typically less than a half-hour trip from the Superior house. Will quickly realized, though, that getting out of the immediate neighborhood would drastically slow that process.
"My street, it's not a particularly busy street, but it's in the suburbs so there's tons of houses around it," he said. "There was just a line of cars that aren't moving because they're trying to escort people out. I had to drive to the other side of Boulder, which is usually a 20-minute drive for me, and it took me almost two hours because the whole town was evacuating."
All the while, the fire made its way closer. Will sensed he would make it out to a main road unscathed, but as more time passed and the cars ahead of him remained stationary, uneasiness began to creep in.
"For the longest time, I was just sitting on my street and it was getting smokier and smokier every 10 minutes. You're sitting there like, 'Okay, it's getting worse and worse.' And then I'm pulling out of my main street and you could start to see the light ash and the debris falling from the sky. It was pretty close."
Finally, the neighborhood was safely evacuated and Will was on his way to meet his parents. In the late afternoon, he arrived at a jam-packed hotel with a line out the door of people displaced from their homes, anxiously hoping to reserve a room for the night. The Dixons' eyes were glued to a TV in the lobby, waiting for any confirmation on the status of their house. For a while, they were still unsure of the extend of the damage, but clues from their in-home alarm systems indicated it was nothing good.
"We have the Ring doorbell alarm and the ADT alarm," Will said. "Our Ring doorbell went out around 5 o'clock, and we thought maybe just the power was out or something. But then we got notice from the ADT that somebody entered our house, and it was from the basement door, the garage door, the front door and some of the windows."
Fearing the worst, they got more definitive evidence around 9 p.m., when a news feed showed an overhead look at the area.
"We live behind turf fields. They were showing over the fields and we were like, 'There they are, and there's our house.' You could see it right on the news."
Will and his family, like many others in the surrounding communities, were left to dwell on their new reality from the confines of a hotel room. They eventually saw pictures of the house, discovering that what used to be a full garage was now littered with chunks of wood and a caved-in roof. Although cars were not allowed to drive through the area for about a week after the fire, the Dixons wanted to see for themselves what, if anything, could still be salvaged.
"What ended up happening was we would park at the mall, which is about two miles away and we were able to kind of sneak in through the back trails and get a good look at it two days after," Will said. "It's pretty scary to go in a house that's half burnt. Our garage is completely gone – the car inside is just the frame. The tires are melted, all the seats are gone. Then, you could see the roof is pretty much gone, and then a lot of the inside is pretty burnt. On the basement level, they went in there with the fire hose, so everything is smashed from the water hose and the fire retardant that they spray. Everything is destroyed – it was just a matter of whether it was water-damaged or fire-damaged."
On Tuesday, January 4 – less than a week after the wildfire – Will returned to Duke for the spring semester. He was more than relieved to see his teammates again, feeling a welcomed sense of normalcy coming out of the traumatic experience. What lingered on his mind, though, was the unenviable position Rick and Ann were left in.
They still remain at the same hotel, realizing early after the 30th that an extended stay would not only be necessary but offer more ease than searching for a place to rent. Fortunately, a more comfortable option was presented to Rick, allowing them to at least know what the immediate future will look like.
"One of my dad's old doctors reached out to him and he has a rental property that was freeing up at the end of January, so they're going to move in there in the next two or three weeks," Will said.
Still, however, the status of the damaged house and what decisions are made for their permanent residency have yet to be determined.
"It's a pretty tough situation," Will said. "Obviously, we're still gathering a ton of information, but we have insurance so hopefully that will cover a good portion of it. But between the housing market and the supply chain issues, rebuilding prices have gone way up, so it's hard to say what will ultimately happen, whether it's more cost-efficient to try and rebuild or whether it's more efficient to restart somewhere else."
Whatever decision is made, the Dixons can do so knowing they have a bountiful support system out of Durham. Will had not even made it to the hotel yet on the day of the wildfire when he noticed the texts coming through on his phone from teammates. In particular, those from Josh Romine, Chris Theodore and Carter Dillon – all Colorado natives whose homes were not affected – assured Will that whatever needs his family had while they processed the situation would be attended to.
"Usually, you expect these things to just be like, 'Hey, are you okay?' but it was almost instantaneously that they knew something was wrong, and they were like, 'How can we help?'"
The following day, Romine created a fundraiser on GoFundMe – an online crowdfunding platform that allows people to raise money for different events and circumstances. While looking to establish a target goal that could be reached through donations from members of the team, parents and coaches, he continued to reach out to Will, asking what was needed and how much money would assist.
"At that point things were still rushing through my mind so I was like, 'I don't know,'" Will said.
Romine set the goal at $5,000, noting on the fundraiser, 'We'd like to support them in the near-term to help replace clothes, food, and other items lost.'
In mid-January, it eclipsed $23,000 with over 201 donations made. Romine designated Rick as the beneficiary, giving him the ability to pull any amount out of the fund within 90 days of its creation.
It has helped largely in paying for what Will describes as "those short-term expenses to kind of re-establish what you have." Though he grabbed as much as he could out of the house in the time he had to evacuate, Will could fit only about a weeks' worth of clothes for each parent. Additionally, while budgeting out their own meal schedule has presented a challenge, Rick and Ann still need to take care of and feed the two pets scurrying around their hotel room.Â
"Since they're at a hotel, a lot of it is eating out," he said. "It doesn't sound like that big of a cost, but when you eat out three times a day for a month on end, it's a lot. Then obviously, getting our cats the litterbox litter, food and all that stuff."
Now three weeks into the fund, Will remains amazed at the support he and his family have received. The response to their situation, according to him, speaks to the familial culture at Duke that he has experienced for the past four years.
"This just solidifies that this is probably the best decision I've ever made in my life, was to come to Duke," he said. "It's more than just the academics and athletics. The people who come here are so willing to help with nothing to ask for in return. They just do it because they're good people. You don't really talk about it – you don't say, 'I would do anything for you and I know you would do the same for me.' You come on to a team and you just know it's how it will be, and a moment like this shows that."
As the Blue Devils track & field team continues its indoor season, Will keeps working back towards full health. Sports, in their nature, can often provide an ease to someone's pain – a pleasant distraction that replaces any stress they are dealing with externally. The gravity of his family's circumstances will not go away for some time, nor will the events of December 30 change. But in the meantime, just being at practices – both through the exercise and the company of his teammates – has allowed Will to step into the world he loves, and the one that led him to his Durham family.
"Every day, it's easy to dwell on what's happened, but even the day after the fire, I still went out for a run because it's that little time of peace that you have where you're just running. It was kind of snowy out, so it was just peaceful, very quiet. At that time, you can be by yourself and let your mind go wherever it wants. Then, my first day back, it was so good to see your friends again, because they know everything that you've gone through and you know everything that they've done for you. You don't really have to talk about it so much, it's just good to be in their presence again."
The GoFundMe to support Will and the Dixon family can be found here.
#GoDuke
Â
The week lodged between Christmas and New Years Eve is often thought of as one to relax and celebrate with family. A way to remove yourself from the stresses of regular life, and for student-athletes, a chance to decompress and recuperate ahead of the spring season.
However, for thousands of families residing in the suburban areas north of Denver, Colorado, Dec. 30, 2021 offered no such comfort. The wildfire that swept through the highly populated communities was among the most destructive in the state's history and forced many to evacuate with a mix of fear and confusion. Such an event was highly unusual in this part of Colorado, especially so late in the calendar year.
Countless houses, still decorated for the holiday festivities, were emptied before being engulfed in the rapidly spreading blaze. One of which was the home of Will Dixon, a senior on the Duke cross country and track & field team, who was at his parents' residence in Superior, Colorado, when the wildfire began that Thursday morning. Just days earlier, the three of them returned from a family gathering in Texas, and when his father, Rick, and mother, Ann, went skiing on the 30th, Will opted to stay home and continue rehabbing a minor foot injury.Â
A few short hours later, he got a call from his mom.
"I was just sitting on my couch watching a movie and I didn't get any of the alerts," he recalled. "I was watching Netflix, so none of the notifications were popping up on the screen. And then, I get this call at around 1 p.m. saying, 'Hey, you've got to get out of the house,' and that's kind of where everything hit the fan."
Will's first reaction, like many in the area, was disbelief. He even remembers looking out the back door and seeing nothing out of the ordinary. But after trying to tell her everything was alright, she convinced him to check outside the front of the house.
"I look out front and there's just this big plume of smoke coming."
What Will woke up to as a "totally normal day," during a break from school that he was ready to spend unwinding, had now turned on its head. The next two hours of his life escalated from uncertainty to scramble-mode, beginning with him stepping outside and seeing the reactions of his neighbors.
"I walked out the front and everybody was kind of like looking around at each other like, 'What are we doing? How is this fire that's still several miles away going to affect us?'"
Shortly after going back inside, Will heard the sound of local police banging on his doors, alerting him and everyone on the street of the situation's severity. Though he knew the immediate move was to pack as many valuable items as he could into his car and evacuate, Will first had to tend to a more difficult task – tracking down the two family cats.
"One of them is totally trusting of us – we've had him since he was really little," he said. "But the other one we got, she's a rescue, so she lived on the street for three or four years before we got her. She's really friendly if you know her, but the police banging on the door scared her, so I was just running around the house and I couldn't find her. At first it was like, 'Okay, this fire is probably still not too close,' but after 30 or 40 minutes of looking you're thinking, 'Oh god, I've got to get going.'"
Eventually, he loaded the car with all the necessities that would fit – his parents' work computers, piles of clothes, some pictures off the walls and of course, the cats.
By the time Will pulled out of the driveway, Rick and Ann had found a hotel that was typically less than a half-hour trip from the Superior house. Will quickly realized, though, that getting out of the immediate neighborhood would drastically slow that process.
"My street, it's not a particularly busy street, but it's in the suburbs so there's tons of houses around it," he said. "There was just a line of cars that aren't moving because they're trying to escort people out. I had to drive to the other side of Boulder, which is usually a 20-minute drive for me, and it took me almost two hours because the whole town was evacuating."
All the while, the fire made its way closer. Will sensed he would make it out to a main road unscathed, but as more time passed and the cars ahead of him remained stationary, uneasiness began to creep in.
"For the longest time, I was just sitting on my street and it was getting smokier and smokier every 10 minutes. You're sitting there like, 'Okay, it's getting worse and worse.' And then I'm pulling out of my main street and you could start to see the light ash and the debris falling from the sky. It was pretty close."
Finally, the neighborhood was safely evacuated and Will was on his way to meet his parents. In the late afternoon, he arrived at a jam-packed hotel with a line out the door of people displaced from their homes, anxiously hoping to reserve a room for the night. The Dixons' eyes were glued to a TV in the lobby, waiting for any confirmation on the status of their house. For a while, they were still unsure of the extend of the damage, but clues from their in-home alarm systems indicated it was nothing good.
"We have the Ring doorbell alarm and the ADT alarm," Will said. "Our Ring doorbell went out around 5 o'clock, and we thought maybe just the power was out or something. But then we got notice from the ADT that somebody entered our house, and it was from the basement door, the garage door, the front door and some of the windows."
Fearing the worst, they got more definitive evidence around 9 p.m., when a news feed showed an overhead look at the area.
"We live behind turf fields. They were showing over the fields and we were like, 'There they are, and there's our house.' You could see it right on the news."
Will and his family, like many others in the surrounding communities, were left to dwell on their new reality from the confines of a hotel room. They eventually saw pictures of the house, discovering that what used to be a full garage was now littered with chunks of wood and a caved-in roof. Although cars were not allowed to drive through the area for about a week after the fire, the Dixons wanted to see for themselves what, if anything, could still be salvaged.
"What ended up happening was we would park at the mall, which is about two miles away and we were able to kind of sneak in through the back trails and get a good look at it two days after," Will said. "It's pretty scary to go in a house that's half burnt. Our garage is completely gone – the car inside is just the frame. The tires are melted, all the seats are gone. Then, you could see the roof is pretty much gone, and then a lot of the inside is pretty burnt. On the basement level, they went in there with the fire hose, so everything is smashed from the water hose and the fire retardant that they spray. Everything is destroyed – it was just a matter of whether it was water-damaged or fire-damaged."
On Tuesday, January 4 – less than a week after the wildfire – Will returned to Duke for the spring semester. He was more than relieved to see his teammates again, feeling a welcomed sense of normalcy coming out of the traumatic experience. What lingered on his mind, though, was the unenviable position Rick and Ann were left in.
They still remain at the same hotel, realizing early after the 30th that an extended stay would not only be necessary but offer more ease than searching for a place to rent. Fortunately, a more comfortable option was presented to Rick, allowing them to at least know what the immediate future will look like.
"One of my dad's old doctors reached out to him and he has a rental property that was freeing up at the end of January, so they're going to move in there in the next two or three weeks," Will said.
Still, however, the status of the damaged house and what decisions are made for their permanent residency have yet to be determined.
"It's a pretty tough situation," Will said. "Obviously, we're still gathering a ton of information, but we have insurance so hopefully that will cover a good portion of it. But between the housing market and the supply chain issues, rebuilding prices have gone way up, so it's hard to say what will ultimately happen, whether it's more cost-efficient to try and rebuild or whether it's more efficient to restart somewhere else."
Whatever decision is made, the Dixons can do so knowing they have a bountiful support system out of Durham. Will had not even made it to the hotel yet on the day of the wildfire when he noticed the texts coming through on his phone from teammates. In particular, those from Josh Romine, Chris Theodore and Carter Dillon – all Colorado natives whose homes were not affected – assured Will that whatever needs his family had while they processed the situation would be attended to.
"Usually, you expect these things to just be like, 'Hey, are you okay?' but it was almost instantaneously that they knew something was wrong, and they were like, 'How can we help?'"
The following day, Romine created a fundraiser on GoFundMe – an online crowdfunding platform that allows people to raise money for different events and circumstances. While looking to establish a target goal that could be reached through donations from members of the team, parents and coaches, he continued to reach out to Will, asking what was needed and how much money would assist.
"At that point things were still rushing through my mind so I was like, 'I don't know,'" Will said.
Romine set the goal at $5,000, noting on the fundraiser, 'We'd like to support them in the near-term to help replace clothes, food, and other items lost.'
In mid-January, it eclipsed $23,000 with over 201 donations made. Romine designated Rick as the beneficiary, giving him the ability to pull any amount out of the fund within 90 days of its creation.
It has helped largely in paying for what Will describes as "those short-term expenses to kind of re-establish what you have." Though he grabbed as much as he could out of the house in the time he had to evacuate, Will could fit only about a weeks' worth of clothes for each parent. Additionally, while budgeting out their own meal schedule has presented a challenge, Rick and Ann still need to take care of and feed the two pets scurrying around their hotel room.Â
"Since they're at a hotel, a lot of it is eating out," he said. "It doesn't sound like that big of a cost, but when you eat out three times a day for a month on end, it's a lot. Then obviously, getting our cats the litterbox litter, food and all that stuff."
Now three weeks into the fund, Will remains amazed at the support he and his family have received. The response to their situation, according to him, speaks to the familial culture at Duke that he has experienced for the past four years.
"This just solidifies that this is probably the best decision I've ever made in my life, was to come to Duke," he said. "It's more than just the academics and athletics. The people who come here are so willing to help with nothing to ask for in return. They just do it because they're good people. You don't really talk about it – you don't say, 'I would do anything for you and I know you would do the same for me.' You come on to a team and you just know it's how it will be, and a moment like this shows that."
As the Blue Devils track & field team continues its indoor season, Will keeps working back towards full health. Sports, in their nature, can often provide an ease to someone's pain – a pleasant distraction that replaces any stress they are dealing with externally. The gravity of his family's circumstances will not go away for some time, nor will the events of December 30 change. But in the meantime, just being at practices – both through the exercise and the company of his teammates – has allowed Will to step into the world he loves, and the one that led him to his Durham family.
"Every day, it's easy to dwell on what's happened, but even the day after the fire, I still went out for a run because it's that little time of peace that you have where you're just running. It was kind of snowy out, so it was just peaceful, very quiet. At that time, you can be by yourself and let your mind go wherever it wants. Then, my first day back, it was so good to see your friends again, because they know everything that you've gone through and you know everything that they've done for you. You don't really have to talk about it so much, it's just good to be in their presence again."
The GoFundMe to support Will and the Dixon family can be found here.
#GoDuke
Â
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