Cam Willett wins first state track title at Zanesville in 32 years
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COLUMBUS — When Cam Willett was disqualified at the district in the 110 hurdles, the Zanesville senior found himself on the outside looking in at his best event.
Or was it?
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Thankfully for Willett, he still had the 300 hurdles in his back pocket. In three weeks, he kept sawing off time at the district, regional and the week or so of preparation for the Division II state track and field meet at Ohio State's Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium.
It culminated in the grand prize on Sunday.
Willett’s :37.92 was good enough to win gold and finish almost a half-second better than runner-up Joseph Filisky, of Macedonia Nordonia (:38.32). Chagrin Falls Kenston’s Rory Booher was third in :38.67.
Willett, who ran :38.88 at the Troy regional, took almost a full second off his regional time.
"It's a dream — it's even bigger than I expected," Willett told Kurt Snyder of the Newark Advocate, shortly after receiving his gold medal atop the podium. "I went out and did my best and wound up winning. It's a dream come true, obviously."
It was a measure of retribution after his poor fortune in the 110 hurdles, when a hurdle he hit during the race rolled into a bordering lane. He was consistently clocked in the mid-to-high 14-second range during the season, times that would have put him in the hunt for a podium finish.
Rather than fret, he refocused with a fury. He responded with his best race of the season.
The timing could not have been better.
"All I had left was the 300s, so I had to give it my all," Willett said of the district disappointment, which he described a communication error and some miscues in 110s, and his wanting to rebound.
Willett crushed his own school record in the 300 intermediates after entering the state ranked in the middle of the pack among qualifiers. Fittingly, he won the title on the same day longtime Blue Devils track coach Wayne Clark, who specialized in coaching hurdles, was honored by the Ohio High School Athletic Association and Ohio Association of Track and Cross Country Coaches for 30 years of service.
Willett joins an elite pantheon of state champs within the Zanesville track program, all of whom Clark coached.
Willett is the first state hurdles champion at Zanesville since Jon Thomas won three in Class AAA, the final in 1981, before a heralded career at Indiana, where he won seven Big Ten events and won a national 400 hurdles title.
The last boy to win a state title at ZHS was Ira Wentworth, who won Class AAA 3200 races in 1988 and 1989 before earning NAIA All-American honors at Malone.
Erika Goines' shot put title in 1994 — she also won in 1993 — remains the last girls championship. She parlayed that into an All-Big Ten career at Ohio State.
The last hurdles champion in Muskingum County was John Glenn's Joseph Clifford, who won three from 2018-19 before running at Nebraska.
His coach? His father, Mark Clifford, a ZHS assistant who also coached Willett. In both cases, he helped a hurdler peak at the perfect time and eclipse the 38-second mark on the grand stage.
Not even after a long weather delay that eliminated the preliminaries and pushed the entire event back a day to June 7 could prevent it.
"I was really just trying to make top eight so I could make All-Ohio," Willett said. "I just wanted to come out and do my best and push as hard as I could, and I got first. Good things happen when you try hard."
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This article originally appeared on Zanesville Times Recorder: Zanesville hurdler wins first state track title at ZHS in 32 years