Upper Dublin senior Dayna Balasa became the 12th player in program history to surpass the 1,000-point milestone. (Photos courtesy of Upper Dublin basketball)
Dayna Balasa makes shooting from beyond the arc look oh so easy.
The fact that the Upper Dublin senior excels should hardly come as a surprise since she has had a penchant for shooting from long range from her earliest days on the basketball court.
“I’ve been playing basketball since I was really, really young,” Balasa said. “When I was in second grade, I played intramural, and they would be like, ‘Oh, you can move up,’ and I said, ‘No, I’m fine. I’ll shoot all the way back here.’ Every morning I would practice, so I guess that’s where it came from.”
Where it ended up was with Balasa rewriting the UD record books. The senior sharpshooter holds the program record for 3s, surpassing the 250 made 3s career mark this season and finishing with 266 (accounting for 798 points).
”Dayna allows you to stretch the defense,” UD coach Morgan Funsten said. “She has to deal with teams trying to key on her and take it away and run her off her line, and she just continues to shoot with the same confidence and not really change much.
“She’s just so consistent, she’s so consistent at practice. Just like all shooters, she’s had a couple of slumps throughout her years but she always snaps out of it. It speaks back to the confidence she has in herself and that her teammates have in her.”
Although best known for her long range shooting, Balasa, according to her coach, is not one-dimensional.
“She helped us in a lot of other ways this year,” Funsten said. “She was our second leading rebounder this year, and defensively, we had to really stay connected against teams that had good size because we were really hurting for size this year.
“Dayna is the number one person who’s always in the right spot defensively, which is something that doesn’t show up in any statistical category, but she’s what allowed us a lot of times to play five guards out there.”
It was appropriate that Balasa reached the 1,000-point milestone on a 3-pointer. She entered her team’s non-league game at Souderton needing six points – she hit nothing but net on her first two shots of the game.
“The shot she got her thousandth point on – she got a steal in the half court, gave the ball up to Jess Polin,” Funsten said. “She sprinted up the left-hand sideline, and there was one defender. Jess Polin - who is just the best ever at doing this - dribbled hard at the one defender, knew that defender was going to come to her, found Dayna and it was noting but net.
“Having watched those two play together – when Dayna got the steal and gave the ball to Jess, as a coaching staff, we knew what was about to happen five seconds before she released the ball. It was like – ‘Here it is. This is exactly how it’s going to happen.’ It was a perfect way for Dayna and her teammates to celebrate the accomplishment.”
Balasa and Polin have been playing together since second grade with Polin – the Cardinals’ savvy point guard – holding the program assist record, surpassing the 500 career assist mark this season. Both were four-year varsity players and starters on the 2018 PIAA 6A state championship squad.
Balasa is the 12th player in the UD girls’ basketball program to reach the milestone.
“I went into the game thinking I would miss everything I shot,” she said. “Then I made the first three. The second one Jess passed it to me, and when you just have that feeling that it’s going to go in – I had that feeling. When it went in, I turned and Jess was just there and I gave her a big hug.
“It’s so unreal, but I really have to thank all my teammates because without them I would not have accomplished this. It’s always been something I’ve thought about but ultimately, I wanted to win as a team, and if I got it, I would be really, really excited and appreciative, but I really just always want to win and not care if I scored a thousand.”
Last fall, Balasa signed a letter of intent to continue her basketball career at the University of the Sciences only to receive the news before a practice on Feb. 10 that USciences would be merging with St. Joseph’s University and discontinuing its basketball program.
“I was really, really shocked,” Balasa said. “I didn’t know what to think – my brain was everywhere. I had no idea what I would do next year.”
Balasa was one of four freshman recruits, a group that included Plymouth Whitemarsh senior Anna McTamney.
“We were texting right away,” Balasa said of her close friend and future roommate. “She’s the only one that really understands it, so we were actually able to talk about it. It’s unreal.”
With the basketball program committed to continue next year, all four freshman recruits will attend USciences and play next winter. Balasa will be majoring in physical therapy.
“I guess at the end of the season I’ll figure out what I’m doing, but I really like their physical therapy program,” Balasa said. “That was a huge part of why I was going there also, so I’m not really sure what I’ll do, but I want to see how the season goes.”
Balasa leaves UD basketball with nothing but the fondest memories.
“It’s been really amazing and unreal – just the coaches and the atmosphere,” she said. “Everything is amazing there.”
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