PROVO — When placing first or second becomes the standard, it's difficult to accept an eighth-place finish.

But for the BYU women's cross country team, placing in the top-10 was about as much as the Cougars could hope for when an injury to Kassi Andersen ended the team leader's season before it even started.

BYU coach Patrick Shane said Andersen's loss was irreplaceable in a team sport where so much rides on individual performance.

"Everyone came close to reaching their potential this year," he said of his runners. "There was no one that hadn't already stepped up."

Despite a fourth-place finish from senior Laura Turner, Shane said Andersen's loss was close to an 80-point difference in the team's overall score.

"If you do the math on it, all things being equal, we would have been third," he said. "It's also difficult to put in account the effort a team will put forth when they know they're in the hunt."

Turner led the Cougars all year, who won their 17th consecutive conference championship. Turner's performance at nationals also made her the second distance runner in BYU women's history to earn four All-America awards.

"It was a dream goal of mine to be in top five at nationals," she said. "I had a good kick the last 400 to 500 meters and wasn't going to let any of the other runners get ahead of me." Senior Rena Williams-Chesser and freshman Heidi Magill were a dominant supporting cast as the three finished 1-2-3 for BYU in nearly every race in 2004.

For the BYU men, Ed Eyestone's team finally put together a strong performance in the big race with a fifth-place finish at nationals, one spot short of their goal to be in the top four.

"A lot of people would have thought that would be an unrealistic goal, but we worked hard toward them and came within 20 points of reaching it," he said. "When you finish fifth it makes those recruiting calls a little easier."

Loaded with seniors, the Cougar men relied on their younger runners to reclaim the MWC championship and complete the season with the second best finish in BYU history. The previous three years the Cougars had not been able to finish in the top-10 after being ranked there most of the season.

"The one thing about this year that was different from years past is I felt comfortable about the season all along," Eyestone said. "As we went from one week to the next the pieces of the puzzle seemed to be coming together."

Three of the team's top five finishers at nationals will be back next season, including lead runner Josh Rohatinksy. The sophomore trudged his way through the muddy course in Terra Haute, Ind., to a 22nd-place finish and All-America honors.