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Special contribution to WSN by UW-Stevens Point communications student Jesse Osborne

Olin Hacker is accustomed to winning cross country races this season.

The junior from Madison West has won every in-state competition he's taken part in so far in 2013, and if that trend continues Saturday at the WIAA state cross country meet at The Ridges Golf Course in Wisconsin Rapids, Hacker will add his name to a long and distinguished list of Division 1 state champions.

"I think Olin is one of several guys who will have a chance to win the race," Madison West coach Tom Kaufman said. "He will certainly be one of the guys that will be in the hunt for that."

Saturday will mark Hacker's third state meet appearance. He finished 97th overall as a freshman in 2011 (17 minutes, 10.20 seconds) and posted a 14th-place finish last year (16:00.05) in helping the Regents to the Division 1 team title. 

And as for this year?

"I'm mostly just really excited. Hopefully I can run really well there," Hacker said. "Winning is definitely something that could happen. I just want to be in the front of the pack and then see how it unfolds." 

If the state meet unfolds anything like Hacker's season to this point, he will certainly find himself at or near the front of the pack headed toward the finish line. 

Hacker has turned in the fastest time in the state this season -- 15:22.2 at the Big Eight Conference meet on Oct. 19 -- according to the Wi-Track cross country honor roll. And in his lone second-place finish this season -- at the prestigious Roy Griak Invitational in Minnesota in late September -- Hacker actually bettered the old course record by a couple tenths of a second, according to Kaufman.

"There's been a great deal of improvement from Olin over the couple of years he's been in high school," Kaufman said. "He's not a big kid, as most cross country guys aren't, but he's grown a fair amount and has gotten a lot stronger in the past couple of years."

"I've just had another year of training," Hacker said. "I'm in better shape and I've developed a little more of a kick than last year."

That finishing kick was on display at the Big Eight meet when Hacker was able to edge Verona's Ryan Nameth -- last year's third-place finisher in Division 1 -- by three seconds. 

Hacker is now looking for a strong finish to his season, one that could potentially put his name in the history book as a state champion alongside that of his father, Tim, who won a pair of individual titles competing for Menomonee Falls North in 1979 and 1980. 

"When we talked early in the season, one of his goals was to try to win a state championship," Kaufman said. "There's probably eight or 10 kids in the state in each division that probably have that as a goal at the beginning of the season. So I don't think he's alone in that. But given that was one of the things he was hoping to achieve this year, that requires a certain amount of attention to detail. And he's done a pretty good job with that, I think."