Gabriel Moronta, in his first outdoor 400 since he was at Pleasantville High School, moved into the all-time South Florida top-10 with a hot race on his new home track in Tampa.
Moronta, who spent the 2021 indoor season through the 2023 indoor season at Mississippi State and recorded some brilliant 800 and 400 hurdles performances, has resurfaced at USF and opened his outdoor season with a 46.55 at the USF Bulls Alumni Invitational.
That’s an outdoor PR and No. 6 in school history.
Moronta never ran a flat 400 outdoors at Mississippi State, although he ran 46.24 indoors in February of 2023 at Clemson. That’s 8th-fastest ever by a South Jersey runner, and that was actually his final race for MSU.
Moronta lost his senior year of outdoor track to COVID, and the 46.55 was his first outdoor 400 since June 1, 2019, when he ran 49.68 at the state Group 2 meet at Central Regional.
At Mississippi State, Moronta ranks 4th in school history in the indoor 400 with his 46.24. He ran 51.38 in the intermediates at the 2022 Southeastern Conference Championships in Oxford, Miss., and 1:49.33 at the 2021 SEC meet in College Station, Texas.
On the all-time South Jersey list, he’s 10th in the 800 with the 1:49.33 and 12th in the 400 hurdles in addition to 8th in the 400.
Moronta hasn’t run a 400 hurdles race since since he ran that 51.38 PR nearly two years ago.
Moronta ranks 20th in NCAA Division 1 so far this spring with his 46.55.
With PRs of 46.24 and 1:49.33, Moronta is the only middle-distance runner on both the all-time South Jersey 400 and 800 lists. Jaymes Dennison is close at No. 15 with 46.90 for 400 meters in Palo Alto, Calif., in 2018, and No. 5 with 1:47.63 in Tempe, Ariz., in 2017.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 