SACRAMENTO, Calif. &045; She’s in her second season of track on the collegiate level, but Janice Davis will admit her freshman campaign seems like ages ago.

The former Natchez High standout sprinter had plenty to learn and adjust to in her first season at Stanford. She wound up making the national meet, but now as a sophomore she’s polished, a little more focused and about 10 pounds lighter.

That’s right. In her words, she was &uot;chunky.&uot;

&uot;I was chunky,&uot; said Davis, who will go in the 100 meters and run a leg on the mile relay this week at the NCAA Track and Field Championships at Sacramento, Calif. &uot;I got to college and &045; poof. I laugh about it now. I had to start running early in the morning, and I ate chicken salads and had to eat grapefruit, which I hate. I dropped 10 pounds.&uot;

Now leaner and maybe a little faster out of the blocks, Davis takes her talent to the national meet beginning with the prelims of the 100-meter today on the campus of Sacramento State University. Already deemed one of the top sprinters in school history, Davis just wants to finish high at the meet this week and maybe try to get back in the Senior Nationals this summer and qualify for the world championships in Finland.

All that may be possible now that she’s fine-tuned everything she does since coming out of high school.

She won the West Region championship in 11.61 seconds.

&uot;Typical hard-headed freshman,&uot; she said. &uot;When I look back, I say, ‘You were such a freshman.’ But you grow up. I’m still not quite there yet. When I got here, I was like, ‘I don’t know anything.’ It still needs work, but it’s better than what I was.&uot;

Recently Davis said she’s had to deal with a sore leg while bracing for the end of the outdoor season heading into NCAA West Regional meet. A muscle strain was causing a muscle connecting her knee to tighten, resulting in swelling in the knee area and slowing her down a bit.

But things worked out. Although Davis qualified for the regional meet at the start of the outdoor season, she really made a statement at regionals when she ran the 100 in 11.47 seconds &045; a mark that’s second-best in Stanford history.

Right now she’s sitting 20th in the nation in 11.50 seconds and pain-free in that left leg.

&uot;I don’t take any painkillers any more,&uot; Davis said. &uot;I was popping pills like crazy. It feels a lot better. It kept hurting me and hurting me, but now it’s better.

&uot;Actually, I wasn’t going all out (in the prelims). It was my best time. As long as I qualified, I wasn’t worried.&uot;

This spring Davis hopes to do a little better than last year and get into the finals of the 100 after she missed out last spring when she failed to qualify after the prelims. She ran a leg on the 400 relay team last time that made the finals and finished seventh overall, but and the mile relay team failed to qualify for the finals.