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When Onalaska High School girls golf coach and social studies teacher Daren Simms entered the 2007 season with a team with a legitimate shot at a Division 1 state championship, he tried not to think too far ahead. Fellow Onalaska social studies teacher and cross country coach Darin Shepardson can relate this fall.

The Hilltoppers girls enter the 2008 season, which begins Saturday at Verona, will all seven of their runners back from last year’s sixth-place finisher at state. That group includes seniors Jami and Katie Hill, and Kaitlin Klos, and sophomores Maddie Hibshman, Jamie Burr, Emily Sell and Jackie Groshek. Jami Hill is hoping to make a third trip to state this fall.

“I’m excited to get going and see where we’re at, to see if our summer training paid off,” Onalaska coach Darin Shepardson said. “We were pretty careful with the incoming freshmen last summer; we brought them along pretty slowly.

“But they all had real solid track seasons, and we’ve been able to do more strength work with them. We’re hoping that more consistent training pays off. Cross country is a summer sport that plays itself out in the fall.”

Shepardson said late last fall that one of the keys for the now-sophomores to take the next step was to be able to do a better job of pressing late in races, and to be able to extend that press longer.

“Being willing to extend yourself is something that tough to decide halfway through a race if you don’t think you can do it,” Shepardson said. “They’ve all got good natural speed, but they have to be in good position to use that speed. We want to make the final 1,000 meters our gold standard.”

Klos will miss Saturday’s meet with a hip injury and will be replaced by freshman Morgan Poss. The runner most bedeviled by injuries last fall seemed to be Hibshman.

“She’s learned quite a bit about how to handle racing,” Shepardson said. “She had a great summer of training and she’s looking really good right now.”

Now, as for the end of the season ... While the Hilltoppers have all seven state runners back. 2007 runner-up Whitefish Bay returns each of their top six runners, while 2007 third-place finisher Bay Port have all but their No. 1 runner back.

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t see us as one of the top teams in the state,” Shepardson said. “But good can be the enemy of great, and we’re already pretty good, but I don’t want us to miss special. Having a lot of goal-oriented kids should help with that.”

Not to be lost in the girls possible push toward a state title is a boys team that returns its top two runners from a year ago in junior Dan Roth and senior Brice Wizner. Roth was about 25 seconds short of a state berth last fall, while Wizner was a first-team all-Mississippi Valley Conference runner as a sophomore. Wizner is a part of a senior class that also includes Chris Hohmann, Garrett Soper and Jake Wozney.

“Dan’s goal is to get to the state meet and Brice would love to end his career at the state meet, and both of them are capable of doing that,” Shepardson said. “How well our team does depends on what our other seniors do.”

Other runners in the mix for a varsity slot Saturday include sophomores Andy Sorenson, Jay Arroyo and Dave LaGrange.

“It takes some time as a coach to learn how each individual responds to training, and to make sure each of your runners gets to the line strong,” Shepardson said. “We’ve tried to take more of an individual approach with the boys this year.

“If we can get five guys into the 16:50 to 17:20 range, the state meet is definitely doable. That’s a 30- to 40-second drop from a junior to senior year for a lot of them, which is realistic.”

Individually, Roth has a fantastic rookie season last fall. His season-best of 16:41 was only six seconds behind Keachen Abing for the best time in program history by a sophomore. Abing is the only runner in program history to run sub 16-minutes.

“Dan has great work ethic like Keachen did,” Shepardson said. “He’s a real student of the sport, too; I say he’s my mainframe on the history of our program. Getting to sub-16 would take a heck of an effort, but if he can get to the low 16s this year he’d have a shot at that his senior year.”

Wizner seemed at times last fall to have a better sophomore than junior year. But he enters his senior with a better personal-best through three years than older brother Ben, who runs at UW-Oshkosh.

“He’s set up for a real solid senior year,” Shepardson said. “He was a little under the radar a year ago.”