Gerrards Cross hasn’t returned to the winner’s circle since starting her career 2-for-2 last year, including a victory in the Colleen Stakes at Monmouth Park, but trainer Kathleen O’Connell feels it’s only a matter of time before that changes.

Coming off a sharp, near-miss second-place finish in the Stormy Blues Stakes at Laurel on June 14 following a six-month layoff, the Florida-bred daughter of Midshipman is back at Monmouth Park for Sunday’s $100,000 Monmouth County Stakes, a 5½-furlong turf sprint for 3-year-old fillies.

She will take on a field of seven.

“I was very pleased with her last race off the layoff,” said O’Connell. “I think that was one of her better races. She is getting older and stronger and developing more.”

Of Gerrards Crossing’s five career starts, four have been in stakes company. Her two best efforts have been her only two grasses races, with the Colleen being one and the Stormy Blues the other. O’Connell would have preferred to take a different route with Gerrards Cross after she won the Colleen but said she simply had no options.

So she ran Gerrards Cross at six furlongs in a dirt stakes race at Tampa, followed by a seven-furlong dirt stakes try there. Gerrads Cross was badly defeated by a combined 22¼ lengths in those races.

Then O’Connell was able to get her back sprinting on the grass and the difference was noticeable in her neck loss in the Stormy Blues Stakes.

“As much as everyone would like these fillies to go longer some of them don’t,” said O’Connell, the second-winningest female trainer in North American history (to Linda Rice) with 2,652 wins. “We tried with her for the owner, who is also the breeder (James Chicklo), and that didn’t pan out.

“We gave her some time, freshened her up, brought her back and now she is raining gangbusters. I couldn’t be happier with the way she has been training.”

O’Connell, who has 35 horses stabled at Monmouth Park, said there was simply nowhere to go for Gerrards Cross after the Colleen except for the two dirt stakes at Tampa.

“The problem when you win early on is there is no allowance race for fillies that goes,” she said. “You either run in a stakes race or you don’t run at all. So even though I didn’t want to run her back on the dirt and I didn’t want to run her long we tried it because that was all we had as options. We figured if we were going to try that with her it would be early.”

O’Connell said she sees a slight comparison to Lady Shipman, a mare who won $902,387 and was second in the 2015 Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint.

“I always felt the biggest attribute of Lady Shipman was her mind,” said O’Connell, who is tied for sixth in the Monmouth Park trainer standings with six wins. “She didn’t care about anything. She was awesome going place to place to race. This filly is in a similar mold to her. We’ll find out how good she is. But at least she has a decent mind and wants to do it.”

O’Connell knows the family of Gerrards Cross well. She trained the mare, Spanish Concert, and Gerrards Cross is a half-sister to Spanish Noble, who won at Monmouth Park on June 28.

The field includes the Lindsay Schultz-trained Carolyncarolne; Tap Into Grace, third by a neck to Gerrards Cross in her last start for trainer Brittany Russell, and the Michael Maker-trained Victory Music.

Admission on Sunday is free in honor of the July 4 weekend and the celebration of America’s 250^th anniversary.