SACRAMENTO, Calif &8212; As long as Janice Davis has been lining up in the blocks, glancing at the competition beside her and focusing on that finish line, she&8217;s never not been nervous.

This week will be no exception.

Now, she admits, it&8217;s so much more than the obvious. There&8217;s more at stake now when she lines up beginning today to run the prelims of the 200 meters at the NCAA Track and Field Championships at Sacramento State University. The sprinter who has already been declared one of the best in Stanford University history still has work to do.

Now she&8217;s more focused because so many more important goals still await the four-time state champ from Natchez High. She wants to finish strong, go pro, return to med school and pursue her dreams.

&8220;I&8217;ve limited my phone time,&8221; said Davis, called BJ by most family and friends. &8220;I don&8217;t really talk on the phone that much. I have to stay focused. I might talk to my mom early that morning (of a meet), but I usually don&8217;t talk to people. My friends and stuff, a day or two before the meet I&8217;m not really talking. Whatever you&8217;ve got to tell me, just save it.&8221;

So it might not be a good idea to reach her today. Davis will go in the prelims of the 200-meter at 7:10 p.m. today and prelims of the 100 at 5:30 p.m. Thursday. Championships in both events will be Saturday afternoon and televised live on CBS.

It&8217;s her third straight trip to the national meet. She made it as a freshman in a relay event and last year in the 100 and the mile relay. Now she&8217;s in the 100 and 200, and the Cardinal opted not to participate in the relay events.

It&8217;s all about keeping things in perspective.

&8220;When I visited her back in April, I told her as we drove back to the airport I saw the maturity there in her ability to put first things first,&8221; said her mom, Janice Davis. &8220;I just looked at her and told her, &8216;You&8217;ll never come back to Natchez again. You have changed so much.&8217; She says she wants to come back to the South but maybe not Natchez. I can live with that.&8221;

That&8217;s because of being exposed to life in California and how much big-time track and field can do for a person. She&8217;s gone from a high school where Wal-Mart was across the street to a university where there&8217;s a Bloomingdale&8217;s on campus and an area woman can buy a skirt for $450 and a pair of socks on the discount rack for $90.

Now, BJ says, she&8217;s got her sights on going pro after she graduates on time next May with a degree in human biology following her senior season on the track with the Cardinal.

&8220;I&8217;ve been running this long. I want to get paid to do it,&8221; she said. &8220;I&8217;ve still got a lot of work to do. You do a few U.S. meets, but they&8217;re mostly in Europe. That&8217;s how you make most of your money.

&8220;Track isn&8217;t big over here. It&8217;s more eastern Europe &8212; France, Spain, Germany and Norway. It&8217;s like a little circuit, and you earn points. You also get appearance fees, and some races you win money. It depends on how good you are and how well you market yourself. You can make it work.&8221;

That&8217;s why she will likely still be nervous this week at the national meet. There&8217;s so much at stake, and throw in the fact that she&8217;s coming off that West Regional meet where she was battling a sore leg the whole weekend while having to run a number of races in three days.

She took some time off after the meet, and the leg felt fine. It was with that sore leg, remember, that she ran the 100 in 11.27 seconds in the prelims &8212; a third-best mark in school history and good enough to put her ranked 14th in the nation coming into the meet.

Auburn&8217;s Kerron Stewart is first at 11.03. Chauntae Bayne, another Stanford sprinter, is 12th at 11.18.

&8220;I was hurting bad,&8221; said Davis, who also ran an 11.27 at the Pac-10 Championships. &8220;The last 30, my leg started killing me. I had no choice, but I&8217;m not complaining about it. I think I was just overworked and exhausted. I wasn&8217;t getting the recovery I needed, and my body shut down. But I&8217;m really excited to run (now). I feel really good, and my mindset is pretty much clear.&8221;

Davis enters the 200 sitting 13th with a time of 23.03, a wind-aided mark from the Pac-10 Championships. At West Regional, she came in fifth in 23.35 seconds, while Bayne came in second.

Bayne and Davis trained together from a while, she said, but now it&8217;s become more competitive. Bayne, who won conference in the 400, will go in the 100 and 200 and is ranked ninth in the 200 at 22.94.

&8220;Practice can be so competitive, and it&8217;s hard to work on form when you&8217;re becoming so competitive,&8221; Davis said. &8220;We would race in practice, and I didn&8217;t care about form because I didn&8217;t want her to beat me. If I have horrible workouts, I know I&8217;m going to be in trouble. These girls are not playing.&8221;

It&8217;s Davis&8217; goal this year to get into the finals after she ended the season in the semis last time. That&8217;s the hardest part of the meet, she said, because everyone wants to make that final cut.

And it&8217;s another difference from high school. Whatever the final results this week, she&8217;ll go off to USA Nationals before enrolling in summer school and later doing an internship with an orthopedic surgeon at Stanford Medical Center.

That&8217;s why going pro is so important, her mom said. Medical school won&8217;t pay for itself. A year of undergrad work runs nearly $47,000.

&8220;Janice has always been close to her dad (Benny Wright),&8221; her mom said. &8220;He left home and became a dentist, and she wants to leave home and become a doctor. He always tells her how he left home with $40 and made it. I&8217;m looking at the pattern that has unfolded. He left home and went far away, and she did the same thing.

&8220;I&8217;m just seeing that unfold. She&8217;s going to go to med school no matter what. If that&8217;s her pattern and motivating factor, I know becoming a doctor is going to be a reality for her.&8221;