Throughout the next few weeks, Bay State Running will be putting the spotlight on some of the top performances of the outdoor track and field season. While we’ve had our share of showstoppers over the past few months, these are the moments that we feel stood out the most and left the biggest impression.
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What often occurs, and for obvious reasons, is that many of our most memorable moments happen during championship season. It makes sense. That’s when athletes start peaking, and the stakes are highest for individual and team supremacy.
But one of our top performances came a little earlier. To be exact, it came on May 15 at the fourth annual BSR Elite Scholastic Meet. We had already gotten a glimpse of the season Newburyport’s Michael Mohoric was capable of when he won the 800-meter run at our Mid-Distance Classic a few weeks earlier, clocking a nearly three-second personal best of 1:54.88.
Under nearly perfect conditions at UMass Lowell’s Cushing Field, Mohoric ran the race of his life—one that would define the remainder of his final high school season. Against a loaded field featuring some of the region’s best, the MIT commit kept his eye on the prize from the moment the starter’s pistol fired and never looked back, and never looked back, cruising to a 10-second best and a meet-record 4:05.77.
Mohoric would run faster at New Balance Nationals a month later, finishing fourth overall in 4:04.55. But his victory at the BSR meet was his breakthrough performance. It set the tone, and he carried that momentum the remainder of the outdoor campaign. Along the way to his All-American finish at New Balance, he also earned gold in the mile at the Meet of Champions and nearly broke nine minutes for the two mile at the CAL Championships with a 9:01.75 winning effort.
