OSCODA - Feb. 5 2005 - The Oscoda volleyball team put forth perhaps its strongest tournament effort of the season Saturday, reaching the championship contest of the Whittemore-Prescott Invitational before losing to defending Class C state titlist New Lothrop.

The Owls opened with a 25-20, 22-25 split with the host Cardinals and went on to defeat Mio 25-10, 25-15 and Lincoln-Alcona 25-23, 25-13 to finish first in their pool. Oscoda defeated Hale 25-16, 25-18 in a quarterfinal match and edged Sanford-Meridian 26-24, 20-25, 15-13 in the semifinals. New Lothrop got the best of the Owls in the championship 25-13, 25-20.

"I was pleased with our overall performance," Oscoda coach Linda Hennigar said. "We continued to play well as a team and are getting a lot more swings on the ball. Our defense was a little flat-footed at times, especially in the the latter games of the tournament. We don't usually play that many games in one day, so we were not physically at our best. (That is) an area that we will definitely work on to improve before the NEMC tournament where we will play five 3-out-of-5 matches in one day."

The only team that challenged the Owls in pool play was W-P, which also didn't lose a match until New Lothrop defeated the Cards in the other semifinal bracket. The Owls had to come from behind to win the first game of the match, while W-P staged its own comeback in the second game.  But before losing that game, Oscoda scored a couple of critical points that helped the Owls win the tiebreaker that gave them the top seed out of their pool.

"With the the score 20-25, I called a time out and told the team that to come out on top of Whittemore in pool play we needed to score at least one more point," Hennigar said. "We scored two -- the side out point on the next planand a point from the service line."

In single-elimination play, the Owls never let Hale get into either game, then edged an aggressive Sanford-Meridian squad to reach the finals.

"We had all we could handle in the first game," Hennigar said of the Owls' 26-24 win. The third game was another white-knuckler for the Owls, who fell behind 7-3 before tying the score at 11-11 and 12-12 before taking the 15-13 win.

Against New Lothrop, the Owls were not able to control the tempo against the defending state champs in the first game, but stepped up in the second game before falling.

"We knotted the score at 20-20 but we committed a couple of unforced errors which New Lothrop took advantage of," Hennigar said.

Leading the Owls were Melissa McCausey with 43 total kills, 28 digs and 100 percent service efficiency; Georgia Welch with 11 blocks; and Michelle Morse with 9 aces and 53 assists.