It’s one thing to appreciate what Dominic Gates has done on a track in his young collegiate career, one of those careers that necessitates a closer examination to fully appreciate. To fully appreciate the Dominic Gates Experience, it’s best to start by quoting from the Book of Gates.
Which means a full dive into a sense of humor that is Sahara Desert-dry in its wit, prisoner-free in its subjects and all-encompassing as a coping mechanism.
Gates on sitting through an accounting class:
“I know the creases of my hands better now. I twiddle my thumbs watching the clock tick by.”
Gates on the importance of his beloved Mott’s fruit gummies, which he mainlines during track practices and meets:
“In Mott’s gummies, we trust. If I find some Mott’s gummies, they’re getting stuffed into my grubby little mitts.”
Gates on where that sense of humor came from and why he embraces it like, well, like a girlfriend.
“That’s the best sense of humor, and that’s me. My dad and my brothers have that sense of humor, and it rubbed off on me. My girlfriend likes my sense of humor, which is all that matters, honestly.”
You grow up with a quick-witted father and two older brothers and you, too, can develop a sense of humor that runs as fast as you do on a track. But you know what else you develop?
A sense of confidence.
“They’ve always helped me get out of my own head,” he said. “When they’ve seen me battling with bad mental advice, my oldest brother, William, would always tell me something that I live by today—‘Just shut up and run.’ You can apply that to life because in a race, you never look behind you. You can accept the past, but the finish line is ahead of you.”
The finish line is indeed ahead of Gates, who established himself as a versatile cog in the Cal State Fullerton sprint corps, one who can run the 100-meters, the 200-meters, the 400-meters and both the 4-by-100 and 4-by-400 relays. Last year as a freshman, Gates finished fifth in the 100 meters in the Big West Championships, an event won by teammate John Clifford. He won the 400 at the Battle in the OC and the 100 at the Steve Scott Invitational.
But to fully understand not only Gates’ personality but his versatility in Titans’ coach Marques Barosso’s sprint squad, we go to another event at last year’s Big West Championships—the 4-by-400 relay.
The week before the conference championships, Barosso sent Gates out in the 400 at the Titan Tuneup, a prep race for the conference championship. To that point, Gates’ best time in what is probably the most difficult event for a runner was 50.31 seconds. He had yet to break 50 seconds.
“I said I was going to run this race like I have every other time in my life and go from there,” he said.
The result: a 48.2-second quarter-mile. Gates had shaved more than two seconds off his personal record.
This brought Gates into the picture as an alternate on the Titans’ 4-by-400 relay team, a status that — on its face — sounds more impressive than it was. He was the sixth man on a four-man relay team, meaning that two runners would need to either get hurt or get replaced for Gates to find his way on the track.
Figuring this unlikely happening wouldn’t happen, Gates ran his 100, earned his fifth-place finish and figured that was a wrap on his freshman year. So he went off foraging for his beloved Mott’s gummies — “I was hell-bent on finding those little suckers. …” — and a nice, comfortable place to watch the rest of the meet.
Until teammate Carter Birade interrupted Gates mid-forage with some unexpected news.
“He came up to me and said, ‘Coach B wants you to run the four-by-four.’ I said, ‘What? You’re joking,’ ” Gates remembered. “He wasn’t joking. I said, ‘OK, let’s do this.’ I went off and found my (relay) teammates: Reyte Rash, Isaiah Emerson and Justin Lowe. They told me, ‘We believe in you. We trust you. You’ve proved yourself on the track. You’re capable of this.’ ”
Gates spent the next hour and 10 minutes practicing handoffs. He’d run the third leg, taking the baton from Emerson and passing it to anchorman Lowe. In between, Gates located his Mott’s gummies, which — like spinach for Popeye or long hair for Samson — is his source of power, his security blanket.
“The atmosphere was different. Standing on that line, it was a different atmosphere,” he said. “My heart was pounding. It was my time to go out and help the cause out.”
Gates, Rash, Emerson and Lowe did just that. They nipped Long Beach State by two-hundreds of a second (3:10.35 to 3:10.37). Of such infinitesimal margins are bigger goals reached. That gave CSUF 184.5 points — a two-point victory over Long Beach State in the team totals. In turn, that gave the Titans their third consecutive Big West men’s track title.
“I was the sixth man, and the fifth man got hurt. It came down to me,” he said. “We had a good celebration after that, and it was a morale boost for everyone.”
That Gates was even at Fullerton was one of those fluke occurrences that often happens in college recruiting. We’ve established that Gates possesses a confidence that serves him well in the clutch. It also served him well when it came to finding a college track program.
Gates was a talented high school sprinter at Tesoro High, the team MVP his senior year after he reached the state preliminaries in the 100. He holds the school record in six events: the 100, 4-by-100, 4-by-200, 4-by-400, the Swedish relay and the sprint medley relay. None of which impressed the colleges to which Gates audaciously sent letters or emails.
All this time, Gates had an inside track to Fullerton. Tesoro’s girls’ cross-country coach Courtney Tebbe is the wife of CSUF distance coach Alex Tebbe. She told Gates he’d fit in nicely at CSUF for more reasons than the two schools share the same mascot — the Titans. Courtney Tebbe sent Gates’ info to Barosso with instructions to keep him apprised of his times.
After Gates ran a 10.49-second 100 in a very fast CIF Finals, a 10.64 at the Masters meet and a 10.68 in the state prelims, Barosso sent him a text saying, “That was a pretty big thing, and we’re going to get you in here and get you right.’ ”
This year, Gates continues to get right. He lowered his 60-meter time in the indoor season by more than a quarter-second, to 6.75 seconds. He shaved a third-of-a-second off his PR in the 200, to 20.97 seconds. He’s run a wind-aided 10.37-second 100 and ran on the Titans’ elite-division, sixth-place 4-by-400 relay team at the prestigious Mt. SAC Relays. Their time of 3:07.29 was the second-fastest in program history.
“The ability to accept that I have an ability to do something good, maybe even great, and execute it at a pretty good level has helped me in my running life and my all-around life,” he said. “I was always going to run in college. It was just a matter of finding the right place to do it, and it just so happened that Fullerton was the only place to bring me in.”
As a result, there will be plenty more chapters in the Book of Gates to appreciate.
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