For track and field, the MAC Indoor Championships is all a mental competition.

The Huskies conclude the indoor portion of their schedule Friday and Saturday at the MAC Indoor Championships in Mount Pleasant, Mich. There will be 18 Huskies participating in 16 events.

“It’s a solid conference,” said head coach Connie Teaberry. “The competition’s going to be stiff, but I think our girls have prepared enough where we can do some great things this weekend.”

Sophomore Claudette Day, who was named MAC Women’s Track Athlete of the Week on Tuesday, will participate in a team-high four events over the weekend. Day said her approach has involved talking with her mom and her sports psychologist “to get my mind right.”

“Throughout my career in track I’ve learned that it wasn’t my ability to run fast on the track, it was my mind that was blocking me,” Day said. “So, that’s what brought me to doing mental exercises like just keeping a journal every day, visualizing where I want to be [and] setting goals.”

Day will participate in the 60-meter hurdles, the high jump, the long jump and the pentathlon. She said she’s excited for the pentathlon and feeling best about the hurdles. She broke her own school record with a time of 8.34 seconds on the 60-meter hurdles Saturday at the Orange and Blue Open in Urbana.

“I’m feeling great right now,” Day said. “I’m in some great places. I’m feeling good going into it.”

Kelsey Hildreth, freshman long-distance runner, echoed Day, saying the physical aspect of preparation is over and it’s all about getting your mind right.

“All of the work is pretty much done,” Hildreth said. “There really isn’t like a specific workout that you can do the week before that’s going to prepare you anymore. I’m just kind of trusting my training from the past few months to be ready for this weekend.”

With the team event being scored with more points for higher finishes, Hildreth, who will participate in the 3K and 5K, said getting the highest finish possible “is going to be the main priority.”

Last season the Huskies took 10th place with 37 points, the second-most points scored in school history at the MAC Indoor Championships.

“This indoor season we’ve seen a lot of maturity and focus out of these young ladies, which have yielded school records, PRs and personal season bests throughout the indoor season,” Teaberry said. The “expectation is for them to get out there and leave it all on the track, stay focused and execute. If we do those things then the places and the points will yield that.”