Ms Locust Point will need her best in Barbara Fritchie

Ms Locust Point has carried the emerging-star banner for a long time, and on Saturday will attempt to win her first graded stakes in the $300,000 Barbara Fritchie at Laurel Park. Her task grew easier Friday when it was learned that Highway Star, her chief rival, would be scratched from the Fritchie.

The Grade 2 Fritchie also has attracted the vastly improved Divine Miss Grey; Berned, who comes into this off the best effort and initial stakes victory of her career; and the hard-trying New York-bred Quezon, who has won a stakes a year from 2014 to 2018.

Ms Locust Point, Quezon, and have the outside posts in what is now a 10-horse field, but they can be expected to move inward as the lineup is likely to lose other players with Bishop’s Pond, Frisky Whiskey, and Sky Flower cross-entered in the 1 1/16-mile Maryland Racing Media Stakes.

The seven-furlong Fritchie is the headliner on Winter Carnival Day, the best afternoon of racing at the Laurel winter meet. The card includes five undercard stakes, including the Grade 3 General George.

:: Get bonus PPs for Saturday's Grade 2 Barbara Fritchie card at Laurel Park

Ms Locust Point, who is stabled at Parx, has been pointed to the Fritchie all winter by trainer John Servis. She tuned up for the race with emphatic victories in a pair of six-furlong stakes at Laurel, the What a Summer and Willa On the Move.

She should be prominent from the outset of the Fritchie under jockey Jorge Vargas Jr., who recently began riding full time at Laurel and leads the standings.

In all, Ms Locust Point is 3 for 3 at Laurel. She closed out her 2-year-old season in December 2016 with a wire-to-wire victory in the Gin Talking Stakes. Following that race, she was sent to Florida, where last February she turned in the only poor performance of her career, a tiring fifth-place finish in the Grade 2 Forward Gal.

Servis said Ms Locust Point had a minor foot issue that he thought was under control. She was given a long vacation following that race and is 3 for 3 since making her return in a Parx optional-claimer in November.

“I’m tickled with the way she’s training,” Servis said. “She’s learned to settle now.”

Divine Miss Grey, who changed hands in a $16,000 claiming race at Gulfstream Park last March, has won 5 of 8 starts since being sent to trainer Danny Gargan. She is coming off her initial stakes victory, a dominant front-running score in the Interborough at Aqueduct.

Berned won her first stakes by rallying from last in the seven-furlong Safely Kept at Laurel in November. The Safely Kept was Berned’s first start around one turn after six conscutive two-turn efforts.

“I think it helped shortening her up to seven furlongs and getting her back on a track that helps her style, one where you can come from behind like that,” trainer Graham Motion said.

How Quezon performs in the Fritchie will determine her future. Owner Marc Keller has a breeding to Gun Runner for her, but if she were to run a big race, retirement could be put off for a year, according to trainer Bobby Ribaudo.

Ribaudo and Keller would love to get Quezon a graded win. She has missed by three-quarters of a length in each of the last two runnings of the Grade 2 Gallant Bloom.