Ohene Obiri Yeboah Lowers his 800m PB by three seconds

 

In track and field, a Personal Best aka "PB" is when an athlete improves his career's best performance in a specific event. That means, the performance is better than that athlete has ever run, jumped or thrown before. So far, the 2026 outdoor track & field season has been highlighted by personal bests by all team members each weekend. This weekend at Morgan State University, those performances continued to see improvements by leaps and bounds. 

 

Freshman Ohene Obiri Yeboah has competed in the middle-distance events, specifically the 800m, 1500m, and even the 5,000-meters. Ohene has truly been a "Jack of All Trades" as well as running a leg on the 4x400 meter relay.  His versatility has been a tremendous asset to the team.  Head Coach Mark Pryor has been careful to orchestrate his young athlete's training toward high level performances.

 

This weekend's Legacy Meet hosted by Morgan State is usually one of the area's best sprint competitions for 100m, 200m, 400m, and 4x100 meter relays. Those results certainly did not disappoint as the winning times were :10.13, :20.71, :46.61 and a blazing :40.28 in the 4x100 meter relay.  But the middle-distance events have seen a resurgence of fast times this season on the high school and college levels.

 

On Saturday, Ohene was given the opportunity to compete in just one event, allowing him to maximize his efforts and focus on a single race. In previous meets, Ohene has been competing in 2 individual events as well as the relay. But Coach Pryor knew the competition would be fierce and an excellent opportunity to allow his athlete to see just how fast he could run.  That event was the men's 800-meter run which is two laps around the quarter-mile track (400 meters).  Ohene's career best time is 2:00.25 from high school in Owings Mills, MD.

 

The pace for the first lap was nice and fast, bringing the leaders thru the first 400 meters at :53 seconds with Ohene in tow at :55.68.  It was the perfect pace Coach Pryor was hoping for.  As the field hit the 600-meter mark, Coach Pryor looked at his watch and saw 1:25.2 for his athlete.  With a last 200 meters in :28 seconds, Ohene was in position to achieve the Junior College National Championship qualifying mark of 1:53.28.  As he crossed the finish line, the big scoreboard illustrated the final times for each athlete. The time for Ohene was 1:57.95 which was a three (3) second PB.  More importantly, it let Coach Pryor know that his training plan was working and his athlete was within reach of the goal of qualifying for Nationals.  Having the athletes compete against higher level competition is one of the ways Coach Pryor can tell what needs to be done in training to help his team continue to perform on a college level.

 

Fellow freshman Dominic Wyant ran yet another good time in his specialty the 200-meter dash with a :21.95 clocking (1.8 legal wind). The allowable wind must be measured at a 2.0 limit for the time to count towards records and specific qualifying standards. Wyant's best performance of :21.68 had a 2.3 wind reading last weekend. Coach Pryor noted that Wyant still needs to continue to work on his 400-meter performance.

 

Here is the link for the full results of the 2026 Morgan State Legacy Meet:  TFRRS | 2026 Legacy Track & Field Meet - Meet Results

 

The next scheduled meet will be on Friday, April 24^th at McDaniel College as they host the Carpenter-Case Invitational in Westminster, MD.

The team is also scheduled to travel to Shippensburg, PA for the Paul Kaiser Classic which will host the best NCAA Division-II schools in the PA, NJ and Va areas.