You stand there in your starting position with every muscle tensed in anticipation and anxiousness, your heart is pumping at a rate you hope your legs can match, your mind scampers over so many things that it soon becomes a dizzying array of thoughts, and then you start and you realize that the race is ultimately between you and time.

After a season of practices, injuries, and meets, the Uni girls track team begins the postseason Friday with the Class A sectional meet at Paxton-Buckley-Loda High School.

The sectional meet determines who will move on to compete in the highest level of competition, state. The top two from every event will automatically move on to state, and all athletes who meet the state-qualifying standards will also move on to state.

For some girls on our team who have already met state-qualifying times in previous meets, sectional is an occasion for them to at least perform as well as they have in other meets. For other girls who have been stomach-wrenchingly close to state-qualifying times, this is the meet to step up their game even more and pull through one last time.

Nearly everyone on the team trekked out to Olive Garden for a pasta dinner together and has vowed to get a decent amount of sleep in preparation for the meet tomorrow.

Today before practice we were read the seeds for every event, but as we all know seeds can be broken. Tomorrow I expect that our team will give our best; I hope that our best is better than everyone else's.