2024 PIAA District 2 4x400m Championship - Dallas Mountaineers

Video credit: Frank G. Natitus

Dallas continued a special season in which it went unbeaten in WVC Division 1 and ran away with the team title at the WVC Championships. To do so, the Mountaineers had to get past Abington Heights.

The Mountaineers entered the final event, the 1600 relay, with a one-point lead, but all top-seeded and significant favorite Abington Heights needed to do was finish in front of Dallas to win the team title.

The Comets seemed to have taken control in the middle two legs.

Enter Basara.

“I knew the possibility that it was going to be a close race,” Basara, the only senior, following a trio of freshmen, Gracie Coyne, Julia Natitus and Ava Puskar. “Coach has been preparing us for this race for weeks.”

To salvage the title, Dallas would need to beat a team that came in seeded more than four seconds faster, Basara would have to rally from almost three seconds behind and she would have to run more than two seconds faster than she ever had before.

“Our coach always tell us to go out hard the first 100 meters, then try to hold it. That’s just what I did to close the gap.”

Basara never slowed down.

The senior had run a season-best 1:00.73 to finish sixth in the 400 earlier in the day and had never run a relay split of better than 59.9. By closing in 57.71, Basara led a victory by about a half-second.

“Between the 200 and 300 meters, I was kind of in the mindset of ‘alright, I’ve closed that gap and there’s still a gap there’,” Basara said. “I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to catch her.”

Basara did on the final straightaway, then held on to win by .41 seconds.
That victory allowed Dallas to post a 113½-110½ triumph over Abington Heights.