The postseason is right around the corner for most and already underway for some — by the time you read this the Austin Packer Dance Team will have competed in the Minnesota State Class AA Dance Meet.

It’s an exciting time of year for high school athletes as each contest determines how they will spend the rest of the winter.

It’s a pivotal time of year for sports reporters and photographers because quite possibly it will result in the absolute worst diet they will see throughout the year only to be outdone by the other two tournament times during the year.

Now before you start pointing your finger at me with those words, “You don’t have to eat that poorly,” let me save you the effort and fully admit — yes, you are right.

I could step up the effort to eat better so yes, this column is going to be an example in hypocrisy.

Much of the reason the diet goes south in the first place is the time element. Speaking for myself and sportswriter Rocky Hulne, the postseason is a lot for two guys to handle, made trickier by the fact that because we work at a smaller paper, there is often times more on our plates than just the tournaments.

And so we seem on the run constantly pushing us towards the golden arches of McDonalds in any of a number of cities.

It’s just convenience to stop in quick, get the meal and take it on the run because we have to make it back to Austin to write content, edit photos so on and so fourth.

Of course payment comes in the form of feeling like you have a bowling ball in your stomach along with the fatigue of the day.

That alone should be enough to actually promote planning ahead, but it doesn’t. Years of bad habits have kind of brainwashed me.

A certain amount of this though can be attributed to being ragingly spoiled while spending my time in South Dakota.

Journalists often times, while covering state tournaments, get to take advantage of hospitality rooms filled with goodies. In Minnesota that ranges from pop to coffee, popcorn and mixed nuts and the sort. It runs out eventually though and seemingly doesn’t get updated.

Granted, I only really state this as an observational fact and not really a complaint. While yes, it was disheartening at the Minnesota State Track and Field Meet to see the doughnuts gradually disappear, but in the end it was for the best.

This wasn’t the case at an early time when I would complain audibly to any journalist unfortunate enough to be near me.

And this was directly because of the experiences I had had while working Huron and more specifically the virtual banquet offered by Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota.

NSU often hosted one of the South Dakota wrestling classes when the state meet came around.

Now I won’t lie to you and say wrestling is my favorite sport to cover. I don’t hate it, but it is what is.

However, myself and fellow sportswriter at the time Mike Carroll often contested as to who would cover whatever class would be hosted on the campus.

The reason being the hospitality room NSU had.

The first year I covered the event I didn’t make use of the room, not knowing in my newness to the profession that it was open to journalists. I didn’t even know of its existence until Mike told me later.

Instead, I foolishly stopped at Hardee’s and picked up a what they had recently introduced at the time as the Monster Burger.

The burger exploded in my hands, with toppings landing everywhere but in my mouth.

So the next year, armed with the knowledge I now had, I marched up to the second level of the gym at NSU, determined to get something to eat rather than repeat the previous years culinary fiasco. I was finding fries and pickles a full year later.

I thought I would maybe have a sandwich and a pop. I certainly didn’t expect angels to be singing and to be greeted by a holy light when I walked through the door.

The room was packed and for good reason. Where there weren’t people standing and eating there were tables packed with food. If my memory serves right there was different kinds of homemade soup and chili, a giant sandwich from Subway, brats, hotdogs, chips, desserts that would make any household Christmas celebration embarrassed.

Coffee, tea, pop, water, juice were available to drink. It was a journalist’s heaven. I probably looked like a newbie to modern times; standing among the delightful goodies surrounding me.

The people helping serve the food were good-natured about my bewilderment, smiling when I filled my plate with as much as I could.

Years after produced similar feats, but I was misled when I thought that all state tournaments were treated as such. When I got to Minnesota I was sure that if a South Dakota event could produce something like NSU did then what could Xcel Energy Center give us when we covered the Austin girls hockey team played — my first state tournament at the Herald.

Popcorn and mixed nuts. That’s what we had and sure I was taken aback. I felt betrayed after NSU. In my head I saw brats where the popcorn was and chili where the mixed nuts were.

And so, I will take a certain amount of blame as far as my tournament diet is concerned, but not all.

This is your fault NSU.