TYNGSBORO – A couple of injuries. A change of heart. A stranger. And a will to win.
All of those things have added up to Greater Lowell Tech senior Dennis Mowatt becoming the school’s greatest shot put thrower, a Division 3 indoor state champion and a soon-to-be Division 1 college athlete.
“Dennis worked closely with all the coaches so he would get better along with making his teammates better,” said head track coach Butch Dion. “Every year and every season, he got a little better until this indoor season when he broke the school record for indoor shot put. In fact, he broke his own record four times that season. He also made it to New Balance Indoor Nationals. The first meet of this spring season, he broke the shot put and discus records and I expect he will break them again before the end of the season.”
During his freshmen and sophomore years, Mowatt, a Lowell resident whose father was born in Jamaica, was a three-sport athlete in football, basketball and outdoor track. He was a sprinter for the outdoor track team, running the 100 and 200, and was a member of the 4×100 relay team, but a hip flexor and hamstring injuries disrupted those seasons.
That’s when the 5-11, 265-pound Mowatt retired as a sprinter and worked his way over to the throwing events.
He started to learn the tricks of the shot put, but the injury bug stayed with him. In the fall of 2022, playing tight end for the football team, he jumped in the air attempting to make a touchdown grab in a game against Shawsheen Tech. He landed awkwardly and tore the meniscus in his knee.
He put off surgery so he could throw for both seasons of track, all the while putting the basketball away for good. Last spring, he finished second at the state vocational meet, throwing a season-best 44 feet, 7.25 inches, which was two feet better than his eighth-place finish at the Division 3 state meet.
A month later, he underwent surgery, which kept him out of this past football season. He was back healthy for the indoor track season, except he had to change his shot put throwing style, going from the glide to the spin, because “it was really tough to crunch down into the glide position. It definitely hurt.”
After watching some of his own videos, he started to correct some mistakes and gradually improved. He set the school record and then threw a gem of 51-10 to become the Division 3 state champion.
Two meets later, at New Englands, his shot put throwing career went to a whole different level.
“I watched a video of this one shot put thrower, and I don’t know who he is, and he said to me, ‘This is how you fix your form.’ I saw his video, I changed up my form just a little bit and all of a sudden I threw 55 feet,” explained Mowatt. “And I was like, ‘I have no idea how I did that.’ It wasn’t just one lucky throw. I followed up with another 55 and then a 54 and then another 55. I didn’t think that was possible for me. It was really a surreal moment.”
In one calendar year, he went from finishing eighth at the Division 3 state meet and throwing 44-7.25 to sixth in New England and throwing 55-8.50.
“It was not what I had expected. I came out of my surgery and I had lost hope. I didn’t think I could continue to do anything in sports,” he said. “I’m not going to lie, as I didn’t even tell my doctor this, but during my recovery time, I was practicing (throwing the shot put) a little bit – even with the pain I was practicing. It was beneficial and it did work out for me in the end.”
That success has carried over to this spring season as well as the next four years as he has committed to throw for Division 1 Appalachian State in Boone, N.C.
Mowatt said it’s just a matter of time before he meets his next goal of throwing 60 feet.
“I’ve been about a foot away from 60 feet at practice and I hit 58 feet in one of the meets this season. I’m getting there and I know I can hit 60 feet in a meet. With the proper training, I’m hoping (in a couple of weeks at) our league meet, that I can hit 60 feet,” he said.
James Albert
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