When he isn’t lifting or throwing heavy things these days, David Pless is tri-folding letters into envelopes and rifling off e-mails to prospective employers.

Each communication highlights personal qualities you might expect to discover among a Bates College senior’s assets: Competitive. Focused. Goal-oriented.

Then he laughs. Sometimes Pless isn’t sure if he’s touting his future as a salesman or his past and present as a champion track and field athlete.

“(Track) definitely translates to the rest of my life,” Pless said.

There’s a lot to translate. In a world that requires a prospect to sell himself in one page, it’s getting to the point where Pless will have to condense those athletic accomplishments into a line or two.

So here’s some help: Three-time NCAA Division III indoor shot put champion. Eight-time All-American, the most such distinctions by a male athlete in Bates history.

To be continued. There is an outdoor season prior to graduation, after all.

“There’s a certain amount of victory lap mentality where there’s a lot of things I want to do in this last season. I’m really interested to see how it’s going to go,” Pless said. “I think it’s going to be great. There are a lot of things that I can achieve. I’m just going to stay present, stay focused on what I’m doing and enjoy all the labor that I think is going to bear fruit this year.”

Pless can appreciate the maturity that reverberates through those words. He knows they’re a far cry from the blind ambition of the tall, blond, somewhat gangly kid who arrived here from Atlanta in September 2009.

Even the sophomore who shocked the Division III world and won the national title was blissfully unaware of how much pressure he was supposed to feel.

When comparing the sweetness of his three championships, Pless noted that the context of his career each winter is an important distinction.

“I think there’s a David of three ages. There’s me as a sophomore, and all the photos you can find to go along with that I think would show that I was much smaller, kind of younger looking,” Pless said. “I don’t want to say naive is the word, but I didn’t really know what to expect. I think that was about perfect for that situation, just being out there to have fun and do my best. It was a special moment.”

Pless discovered that defending the title was more difficult than winning it in the first place, in part because the community’s expectations — spoken and unspoken — accelerated along with his own.

More troubling to Pless than being placed on a pedestal was the idea that it could even indirectly disrespect his competitors or the sport.

“I felt like I had this enormous pressure to go in there and win again. I didn’t want it to play out like that,” he said. “The Bates web site put a picture of me up there, ‘Pless tries to defend his title.’ I called and said, ‘You need to take that down. Please don’t say that.’ I do this sport for fun.”

Leaving the game on top would be fun, of course. Pless took a giant leap toward that destination with his performance earlier this month at North Central College in Naperville, Ill.

His first throw of the finals stood up as the gold medal winner.

“This year I knew something special had happened to me. I don’t think it was necessarily luck of the draw. A lot of hard work went into it,” Pless said. “I really went after it thinking that I would like to win that one, and it took me a while to figure out how I should approach it. I didn’t to lose my humble attitude and say, ‘OK, I think I should win this,’ because I don’t think I should win this.”

Win he did, and nearly in two-fisted fashion. Pless also placed second in the weight throw, a career-best in the event.

The seventh and eighth All-America honors of his career tied and then broke the previous Bates male record set by diver Andrew Hastings, a 2002 graduate.

Eighteen other athletes have won three Division III championships, and Pless is only the third man to achieve that status in the shot put.

Pless shrugged off the individual accomplishment. He is equally enthused about Bates’ fifth-place finish as a team, the Bobcats’ best-ever showing, and anticipates that his best track and field reminiscences later in life will be collective ones.

“I couldn’t encapsulate it in wanting to win for posterity, because I don’t think my memories will come from championships that I’ve won,” Pless said. “(I’ll remember) the State of Maine indoor title. The ECAC outdoor. My favorite memory is my junior year, we won the indoor New England championship. That was the first time Bates ever won it. It was the most phenomenal feeling. It was like a team of individuals was one unit that day.”

Perhaps the only unfinished business on Pless’ resume is outdoor gold. He has never won the spring shot put, although he was a dual All-American — third in discus, fourth in shot put — in June 2012.

He began his open-air workouts focused on the bottom line before changing course and returning to what worked in the past. Maybe the carefree sophomore knew best.

“I kind of lose sight of it all when I’m chasing things. I’ve never thrown really far just because I had a number in my head and I’m going to throw this number. All of my best throws have been when I just kind of relaxed,” Pless said. “(Thursday) I was just playing around, kind of letting it flow and it was going really well. Just slowing it down and having fun with it and not trying to kill it, I guess. Time’s running out, but I have to enjoy it.”

Pless has no specific competitive aspirations beyond graduation. He plans to pursue his business career in California.

Training five hours a day has become such a structured part of Pless’ life that he can’t imagine what the mornings and afternoons will be like without it, he said.

If not competing, he could see himself giving back to the sport as a coach in some capacity.

“Track is really awesome as a measuring tape. You can find out how well you did by how far you throw it, so each time you (set a personal record), even if it’s by a centimeter, it’s a grand victory,” Pless said. “That’s why I love this sport. It’s always competing against yourself.

“It’s probably going to be a lifelong thing. I consider myself almost a student of the sport.”

He’ll never need a slick sales pitch to convince anybody of that.

koakes@sunjournal.com