It was the dawn of last spring, and then freshman Alexa Sarsfield, an acclaimed soccer player much of her youth, decided she wanted to give running track a shot at Springdale High School.

Sarsfield knew she wanted to run track, but there was a slight problem -- she didn't know exactly what event to take up. So she enlisted the help of a few older girls on the Dynamos' track team as the season approached.

"When I went out there, I really had no clue what I was going to be, if I was going to run the sprints, or what I was going to do," Sarsfield said of that first day at track practice. "My friends said, 'Hey, you have pretty good speed on the soccer field and you have a lot of endurance, so you should probably run the 400.' So I tried that, and, you know ..."

Yes, everyone knows -- the rest, as they say, is history.

Tuesday, the now-polished sophomore made it WPIAL history.

Sarsfield set a WPIAL Class AA championship meet record in the 400 meters, turning in a blazing time of 58 seconds at South Side Beaver High School, which was good enough to top the previous WPIAL mark of 58.08 set by Deer Lakes' Kerry McKinney in 2001.

And if that weren't enough, Sarsfield then went out later in the meet and ran a picture-perfect anchor leg of the 1,600 relay to boost the Dynamos to another record, as the quartet of Sarsfield, Stephanie King, Laura Gajdosik and Brittany Loveland completed the four laps in 4:01, breaking the former mark set by Quaker Valley in 2005.

For good measure, Sarsfield also took third in the 200 with a time of 26.03.

As a result of her stellar showing at the WPIAL meet, Sarsfield will compete at the PIAA championships May 23-24 at Shippensburg University in the 400 and 200, and Springdale's 1,600 relay team will also make the trip to the state's largest track stage.

At the WPIAL championship, Sarsfield had numerous shining moments, but perhaps none was more electric than the minute or so (give or take a second or two), when she blistered around the track in the anchor leg of that 1,600-relay.

She took the baton about two strides ahead of a Burrell runner.

"I realized it was just a couple of steps lead and said, 'Man, I have to get out there and really go,'" Sarsfield said. "I could hear her running right behind me and I knew that I needed to pick up the pace. My teammates did such a great job of having us in position at the end to win the race that I didn't want to be the one who let them down."

And she didn't.

After the first 100 meters, that lead was increased to about five strides. At the halfway mark it had stretched to about eight.

As Sarsfield rounded the final turn, she was home free and, at that point it was a race against the record, as it was glaringly evident that no opponent was going to so much as push her, let alone catch and pass her.

Sarsfield finished more than 6 seconds ahead of the nearest competitor and as she crossed the finish line was mobbed by her relay teammates. When the time of their effort flashed on a trackside scoreboard, they immediately knew they had bettered the prior record and jubilantly celebrated.

"I was really pumped to run the 4-by-400 because I knew we had a good chance to win and I know this group of girls has worked so hard to get here," Sarsfield said. "I just came into it a little tired, because I had just run the 200.

"But then I saw all the confidence my teammates had in me and I knew there was no way I was going to let them down. I was a little tired, but there was no way I was going to let that affect me."

Hardly anything affected Sarsfield Tuesday -- and she has two gold medals, and two WPIAL records to prove it.