Trainer Diane Morici’s 34-horse barn at Monmouth Park mostly consists of allowance horse, claimers and 2-year-olds. But when she does have one in a stakes race – as she will with Shrug in Sunday’s Oceanport Stakes – it’s worth paying attention.

Over the past 10 months she has tried three stakes races, all with Ms. Bucchero. The results: two wins and a second (the latter in the Regret Stakes at Monmouth Park on July 20).

The late-running Shrug, a 4-year-old son on Candy Ride, will be making his stakes debut in the Oceanport, a mile and a sixteenth turf race for 3 year olds and up. It attracted a field of seven and one main track only entrant.

“He’s been training good. It’s not like he has run badly,” Morici said of Shrug. “I thought we would take a shot with him. He came out of his last race good, so why not?

“There are a couple of really good horses in the field but I think he deserves a shot.”

After originally selling for $475,000 at the 2022 Keeneland September Sale, Shrug was claimed for $32,000 by Morici, winning his debut for her at a mile and an eighth on the grass at Laurel. He was second in allowance company at Monmouth Park on June 21 before finishing a tiring eighth in his next start at Monmouth Park on July 19.

“This race could set up for him,” said Morici. “He’s lightly raced (five career starts) so he still has plenty of room to improve.

“I’m not walking over just to participate. I think we’ve got a shot for the win. The main thing is to see if he can run with these horses. We’re going to test him to see where we are with him.”

For Morici, her first summer at Monmouth Park has been a solid one, with eight wins from 50 starters. Her hope is to surpass last year’s personal bests when she won 30 races overall with earnings of $999,205.

“That’s the goal,” she said. “We’ve had a couple of setbacks but I have a couple of 2-year-olds coming up that are decent and a couple of nice 3-year-old fillies that have been on the shelf and are just coming back.”

The 47-year-old Morici, who grew up outside of Chicago, said she has been around horses her entire life. She went out on her own as a trainer in 2009.

“I grew up jumping in Chicago since I was little,” she said. “I went to the racetrack when I was older and started galloping. I went to work for a few different trainers. Dallas Stewart is like my dad. I speak to him one or two times a week. I had a lot of different jobs. I galloped, I was an assistant and I rode for a while. But that was not what I wanted to do so I went back to being an assistant and then went out on my own.”

Morici had training success immediately with Eldaafer, a multiple graded stakes winner who was claimed for $20,000. He won the Breeders’ Cup Marathon in 2010.

Morici then took nearly three full years off from 2017-19 to start a family.

After her daughter was born she debated internally about a return to training.

“I was going back and forth. `Should I return, should I not go back?’ ” she said. “I had different thoughts on it. I sold everything and I promised I was never going back.

“But it always gets back to the horses for me. I grew up with them. So I had to start all over again when I came back.”

These days she says he would like a stable that is “more manageable.”

“I’d like to get down to 25 horses,” she said. “I’d like a smaller stable with better quality as opposed to quantity.”

Shrug, she hopes, will add to that quality. The Oceanport field features the Arnaud Delacour-trained Air Quality, a winner in his last start; Cliff Hanger Stakes winner Otago and Jersey-breds There Are No Words and He’spuregold.