PFAFFTOWN, N.C. – Dawson Reeves ’24 didn’t want to psych out himself by looking at who else had entered Saturday’s New Balance Dash for Doobie.
It’s the other 273 runners who should have been worried.
Dawson won the 3,200-meter track race at Reagan High School by nearly nine full seconds (9:11.56) and the Duke University recruit was by himself for much of the last four laps.
“Coming into it, I just wanted to be calm and collected. I didn’t look at the heat sheets. I didn’t want to know who was here,” Dawson told MileSplit in a postrace interview.
“What my coach (Randy Ashley) told me to do was go into it and stay with everyone through the mile, feel myself out and see what I have in me, and go for the win. That’s always the goal.”
Dawson’s younger brother, Dallas ’27, was the third-fastest freshman (9:54.67) in Saturday’s race, coming in 59th.
Dash for Doobie is a charity race held every November that celebrates the life of former Reagan runner Nick “Doobie” Doub, who died in a single-car accident 12 years ago.