Willis Gains Retribution For Garden Loss

This time Dameion Willis got off to a fast start and finished first in the 55-meter dash finals in the 103rd PSAL city championship, held at the Armory Track & Field Center Saturday afternoon.
Finishing the race in an impressive 6.55 seconds - his fastest time since he placed sixth in the state championships last March - the Campus Magnet junior proved a disappointing fourth-place showing at the Millrose Games, held at Madison Square Garden last month, was an anomaly.
“I’ve been dreaming about this for a while,” Willis said. “I felt good when I was in my starting position. When I mess up at the start, I usually feel weird. I felt fine today.”
In his disheartening finish in the 60 meters last month, Willis started slow and never had a chance, finishing behind Stephen McLean of Transit Tech and Ayo Ishola Isijo of Sheepshead Bay. There was no shoddy jump at the opening gun this time, though.
“I worked on my start in practice,” he said. “Since the Millrose Games, I’ve been working at it. … I knew I could beat them,” Willis said of McLean and Ishola Isijo. “This means a lot. I’m trying to contain myself from getting too excited.”
The afternoon wasn’t all roses, however, for Willis, who failed to qualify for the nationals by two-hundredths of a second. He will get another chance in the state championships Saturday at Cornell University in Ithaca.
Elsewhere in boy’s events, Milosz Domurad of Forest Hills took home the gold medal in the shot put, Bayside’s Raphael Santos won silver in the pole vault, and Francis Lewis’s 4×800 relay team of Brandon Leung, Sushank Chibber, Khalil Calixte and Bhasnar Ramkarran also earned silver.
– Zachary Braziller