Dexter & Brooklyn
Dexter Mack in the lab
Everything good in Dexter Mack’s life, past and present, he attributes to basketball.
“I committed myself to just one thing, and the habits I built as a kid prepared me to do anything,” says this 20-year-old SMC honors student.
Dexter is a double major in philosophy and statistics, but as he enters his second year of college, he’s considering a change of focus to pre-med. “My long term goal,” he says, “is to either become a National Basketball Association data scientist or a doctor.”
Either way, Dexter has no doubts about his future success, because basketball gave him the twin superpowers of “discipline and resilience. It taught me so much that’s applicable outside the world of sports,” he says.
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For as long as he can remember, Dexter has been fixated on hoops.
In sixth grade, he was recruited to join Above and Beyond Athletics, an elite middle-school basketball academy in Anaheim.
“We would train every day, two times a day,” he recalls “I was obsessed with basketball. It consumed 90 percent of my life. And not to be too boastful, but I was really good.”
Dexter’s single mom made sacrifices to support his passion. Ten years ago, Mercedez had moved the family from Little Rock, Arkansas, to be near her ailing mother in Los Angeles. After long days working as a Hertz shuttle driver at LAX, she would chauffeur Dexter from their Watts neighborhood to the ABA Academy, an additional 50 miles round trip.
“I appreciate her so much for that,” he says.
Quitting was never an option. When Dexter realized he’d topped out at his present 5-foot 6-inches, he didn’t let height hold him back. “My dribbling skills are above average, and I used my quickness,” he says. “It worked out for a long time.”
His first two years of high school, Dexter was the star point guard. When Covid shut down athletics in California, Dexter went to live with his father in Arkansas so he could keep playing through junior year. But things went sideways after an early loss with his new team, and Dexter was cut from the starting lineup.
“Suddenly this thing I’d been good at my whole life was not working,” he recalls. “It was a turning point.”
For the first time in his life, Dexter put real effort into academics. Teachers had always said he was intelligent, but his grades didn’t reflect that. With the same tenacity he’d learned through basketball, he hit the books. That year, he earned a 3.7 GPA while teaching himself several coding languages on the side.
Returning to California for his senior year, Dexter resumed varsity basketball at Paramount High while setting himself a personal goal of achieving a 4.0 GPA. He succeeded.
Upon graduation, Dexter enrolled at SMC. On his own initiative, he found an internship in a UCLA cognitive science lab. His ability to code in the programming language R clinched the four-month research position. He also knew Python, CSS, C, JavaScript and C++ thanks to online courses taken during high school.
When the fall semester started at SMC, Dexter enrolled as a computer science major, but he switched to statistics after watching a video about an NBA data analyst.
A whole new world—combining basketball and data science—opened before Dexter’s eyes. These NBA “quants” are hired to improve on-and-off-court decision making by leadership at the league or individual team level. The job can involve predictive analysis, data visualization, statistical modeling and much more.
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Meanwhile on the court, Dexter was working out and practicing with the Corsairs, intending to try out for the spring starting line-up.
By week four, however, he’d hit a wall in pre-calculus. His homework was coming back with scores in the 40s.
Applying familiar training strategies to the problem, Dexter buried himself in math. Paradoxically, to succeed he knew he needed to drop pre-calculus and skip basketball practice.
For the next four months, Dexter drilled four to five hours a day solving advanced algebra and trigonometry problems. “I filled up three notebooks,” he says. He’d start his day at 5 am watching YouTube math tutorials. Between classes, he hung out at the STEM tutoring lab.
“And it worked,” he says.
Last spring, Dexter passed pre-calculus with test scores in the 90s. STEM program leaders were so impressed they hired him as a math tutor for the fall, while he’s simultaneously enrolled in calculus (Math 7). “Maybe after that, I’ll try to tutor calculus in the spring,” he says, with natural confidence.
As for basketball, though Dexter no longer practices with the Corsairs, he frequently joins them in pick-up games. “I still play at a competitive level,” he says, adding that he runs daily to keep fit.
On Fridays, Dexter volunteers as a trainer at the ABA Academy, riding buses and trains to get to Anaheim from his East Hollywood apartment.
“I’ve been going back and forth ever since I left, which was seven years ago. They’re like my extended family,” Dexter says. “Some of these kids are probably going to be NBA players,” he adds, noting that one ABA buddy was recently drafted by the Philadelphia 76ers.
Dexter’s other interests are surprisingly sedentary.
He keeps two journals: one for everyday reflections on his life, another to probe ideas triggered by his philosophical readings.
“I’ve always been into introspection and self-reflection,” Dexter says. “When I’m able to put my thoughts on paper, it feels good.”
He’d fallen in love with philosophy while taking Micah Daily’s “Knowledge and Reality” (Philos 1) in his first semester. When the course ended, Dexter found himself reading philosophical texts on his own time, so he added it as a second major.
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His first year has brought Dexter many other opportunities to push his boundaries and test his resilience.
In January, he competed in UCLA’s prestigious IDEA hackathon. The 48-hour biomedical design contest saw Dexter and his teammates working round-the-clock to conceive and build a prototype sensor system addressing the unique challenges of the blind.
In May, he started a summer internship in the Ajijola Lab at UCLA. He’d spotted the neuro-cardiology research opportunity on the STEM Program portal.
It’s his first wet lab experience, and Dexter is intrigued. The project “compares stellate ganglion, a tissue that controls heart functions such as beating and blood flow—to another tissue, called the major pelvic ganglia, which controls bladder function,” he says.
“I’m doing a lot of mouse research, tissue staining and tissue washing,” he says. It’s all fodder for introspection on the choice he must soon make between a future in medicine or data analysis.
Dexter’s resilience was sorely tested in June, when his twin sister, Brooklyn, a Long Beach Community College student, was killed in a random shooting at a neighborhood store. Though reeling from the tragedy, he continued working at his UCLA lab—“because you’ve got to stay professional in a setting like this,” he says. He leaned into his summer session course at SMC, “Contemporary Moral Conflicts” (Philos 5).
Dexter is still processing his grief. “It’s constantly on my mind,” he says, “and it’s propelling me in the direction of becoming a doctor.”
Whether he’ll study medicine or data science, there’s definitely more education in Dexter’s future. He’s set his sights on earning his bachelor’s degree at UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego or UC Irvine, then going on to graduate school.
SMC STEM Counselor Sheridan McArthur, who has helped guide Dexter on his journey--she calls it "a privilege"--stated that
Dexter has continued to persevere in the face of adversity, feelings of doubt and
imposter syndrome. "We have had many meaningful conversations around transfer, career,
and his ultimate goal of pursuing medical school. . . he has accomplished so much
in his first year at SMC and I look forward to seeing the positive impact he will
continue to make on his community, on and off campus."
Indeed, no doors are closed to this intrepid and resilient young man.
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SMC in Focus Volume X, Issue 4
Never Too Late
Ana Mora survived an abusive relationship and substance use and gained a fresh start in life at Santa Monica College. Read Article
Post-Game Strategy
From hoops to standard deviations, Kant and stellate ganglia, this outstanding Corsair has a proven gameplan for personal success. Read Article
Fostering Futures
As former foster youth, Sabrina Conner and Shirel Omidi have faced numerous hardships, which they are overcoming through their own resilience and support at Santa Monica College. Read Article
No Looking Back for Ma’isha Reid
This dedicated student services specialist & SMC alum deferred her dreams for decades. But she has zero regrets, and stands on the cusp of a brand-new chapter of her life. Read Article
Bragging Rights
An opera, advocacy for arthrogryposis, taking a trick horse onto national TV, awards, helping & feeding students, boundary-breaking dance. Read Article
Soaring in the Unknown
This Asian-Latina from Ecuador came to SMC with trepidations about the unfamiliar. Through grit and determination, she found courage to flourish in the unknown. Read Article