Pass URL component/path to PHP with Nginx

I recently switch from Apache to Nginx. I'm brand new to Nginx, so please be kind. One of my apps uses the first URL component as a query string unless the path/file exists - in which case Apache serves the file. Previously, I would pass PHP the first string in the URL path such as example.com/foo (where foo is passed). My old .htaccess looks like this:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

   RewriteEngine On

   RewriteBase /

   # if file or directory exists, serve it   
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
   RewriteRule .* - [S=3]
   # if not, pass the url component to PHP as the "section" query string
   RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/?$ ?section=$1 [L]

</IfModule>

I've tried many things in Nginx but because I'm so new, I'm stuck. This seems to get me the closest to what I want:

server {

  root /var/www/mysite.com;

  index index.php;
  server_name www.mysite.com mysite.com;

  location ~ \.php$ {
    include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
    fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
  }

  location / {
    rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.php?section=$1 break;
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$args;
  }

}

Still, the query string doesn't seem to be passed to my index.php script.

I've reviewed these other questions:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9641603/remove-parameters-within-nginx-rewrite (Not exactly what I'm after, speaks to removing additional $args)
• https://stackoverflow.com/a/40334028/1171790 (I tried this solution by replacing 'location' with an empty string but it doesn't seem to pass the param to PHP)
• https://serverfault.com/a/488480/325456 (I'm unclear what my regex should be after rewrite. This answer uses just '^'. This seems too broad if I want to still serve my static files/directories)
• https://serverfault.com/a/542550/325456 (This seemed closest to what I am looking for, but copy/pasting the code and replacing the filename/values with my own still didn't work for me)

If someone with a better knowledge of Nginx than I could help me out, I would be eternally grateful.

I ended up using a named location. This functions, but I still feel like there's a better solution out there.

server {

  root /var/www/mysite.com;

  index index.php;
  server_name mysite.com;

  location ~ \.php$ {
    include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
    fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
  }

  location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ @fallback;
  }

  location @fallback {
    rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.php?section=$1 last;
  }

}

A more native way of doing this in nginx is:

server {
    root /var/www/mysite.com;
    index index.php;
    server_name example.com;

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
    }

    location /(.*) {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?section=$1;
    }