Dawes
Mark Dawes has a perfect counterbalance going on in his life.
His two great passions are swimming and chess. While sitting at a chess board, he is constantly thinking, analyzing and strategizing.
As a senior on the Robbinsville High School swim team, he is a standout sprinter whose events require little thinking and a lot of instincts.
“I just go all out,” he said. “It’s completely different. Chess kind of gives me a break from the intensity of sprinting. It’s like a way to relax.”
It must be helping, as Dawes is one of the top sprinters in Mercer County, swimming the 50 and 100 freestyle for the Ravens. Although it has been a tough year for the boys’ team overall, Dawes has won the majority of his races.
During his first three years with Robbinsville he swam the 100 and 200, but switched from the 200 to the 50 this year, which he said he likes “a lot better” than the longer race. But, much like the balance between chess and swimming, he also needs a balance between focusing on his start and not thinking all that much about it.
In sprints, the start is everything since there is barely any time to make up for a poor getaway. But if Dawes tries to make it too perfect, it blows up on him.
“I notice, when I start thinking, sometimes before a race about my reaction time, I start getting more nervous,” he said. “So when I’m behind the block, I try not to think about it. When I don’t think about it my reaction time is normally faster. When I’m nervous and start focusing on my start, it’s not as good.
“It’s like a Catch 22. You want to focus, but you don’t want to over-focus.”
None of that was ever a problem back in Dawes’s pre-school days, when he floated contentedly in his little Sesame Street tube in the family pool. He began taking lessons at 8 at Peddie’s stroke-and-turn clinic. Three years later, he joined the Hamilton Aquatics Club and has been there ever since. When he first started competitive swimming, the least of his worries was whether he was a sprinter or a distance guy.
Slowly but surely, however, he began to develop a niche.
“Probably three or four years ago I started noticing my sprint times were a lot of better than other events,” he said. “At HAC they just kind of noticed whenever I did a sprint event, my times were a lot better than other events that I was swimming, so they started putting me in the sprint events.”
It turned out to be the right move. While he may do the butterfly at times, his main events are the fastest ones. Much of that had to do with his work at Hamilton Aquatics.
“Over the summer we’d have doubles (two practice sessions) in the morning and afternoon,” he said. “Once I started attending doubles every time we had them, my times started getting a lot faster. That carried over to the high school season. Once I started at Robbinsville I was in great shape.”
Girls’ team member Jillian Galindo, who has been a teammate of Dawes for four years, feels he is one of the anchors for the Ravens.
“Mark is an incredibly talented swimmer and a huge help to the guys team, considering we do not have that many boys to begin with,” Galindo said. “His races are always exciting and they definitely get the team excited.
“I think his biggest improvement is that he has gotten closer with the team. He has become more of a leader for the boys’ team and is definitely a role model for the other boys on the team.”
Dawes has made tremendous drop in his times over the past two years. Last year in the Mercer County meet he won the B Cut finals to finish seventh in the 200 and finished ninth in the 100. He won’t be swimming the 200 this year but feels he is just as good in the 50.
His work ethic increased so much over the summer that he reached his first cut in the 100 for the YMCA National Meet for HAC. But as often happens, once he got to Nationals, he was just happy to be there.
“My time there was about half a second slower than my qualifying time,” he said. “When I was going for the national cut it was my goal to get that cut and it’s all I was focusing on.
“Once I got that national cut I didn’t have that drive anymore. I got to nationals and didn’t have anything to work for. I really wish I didn’t have that mindset.”
It’s a mind that’s always working, especially when chess is involved. Dawes actually started the Robbinsville chess club his freshman year. He was self taught by watching You Tube videos and purchasing chess books.
“I went to one tournament my freshman year before swimming took over my life,” he said. “I ended up having to drop out halfway through because I took a percussion class and had a concert. I won two matches and lost one. Overall it was a good experience. I’m planning on going to college and hope to go to a tournament then.”
Dawes is waiting to hear from Montclair, which is his number one choice for both academics and swimming. And if he gets his wish, that counterbalance will continue on an even higher level.
,
