STANDISH-STERLING - Nov. 5, 2009 - Tawas Area's volleyball team hopes to follow Gladwin's suit in a year.

Gladwin, which held on for a hard-fought 12-25, 25-16, 25-14, 18-25, 15-13 victory over the Braves for the Class B District 62 championship on Thursday, played for last year's district title with a relatively young squad and returned much of that team intact this season.

That will be the Braves next year. Tawas graduates just three seniors from a team that won its first league title in 29 seasons and nearly pulled off a miraculous fifth-game comeback against Gladwin.

"Our inexperience showed at times," said Tawas coach Carol Elowsky. "We just looked young.

"I'm happy with how we played, though, especially the way we played in the last two games after what we did in Games 2 and 3."

The Braves used a 16-3 run in Game 4 to get back in the match. Traling 2-1 in sets and 11-8 in the game, a series of Molly Stoll kills backed up Katie Challenger's serving to put the Braves in control and set up the winner-take-all, 15-point Game 5.

Gladwin took a big lead as Melanie Smalley, whose hitting challenged the Braves all night, controlled the net. A pair of Danielle Balzer aces gave the G's an apparently insurmountable lead at 13-6.

Tawas fought back, getting a pair of aces from Hanna Colombo, another ace from Sarah Koroly to make it 14-12 and a block by Challenger give the Braves hope.

Gladwin finally put down the winning point on a big hit byEmily Zelt to set off the G's title celebration.

"Even when were down, we just kept playing," Elowsky said. "Sarah Koroly did a beautiful job of keeping everyone calm, and then getting our sets up there.

"It came down to us not being able to do much with (Smalley). We just didn't have anyone big enough to do that."

The Braves rolled to an easy win in the opening game, scoring the final 10 points as Stoll and Dana Kolnitys had their way up front and Gladwin committed a  number of unforced errors.

But the Flying G's cleaned up their game, taking an 18-5 lead in Game 2 and 13-3 edge in Game 3 as Smalley, Zelt, Meredith Rosin and Ashley Gord made the game look easy.

Gladwin moves on to Tuesday's regional semifinal at Petoskey where they will face Sault Ste. Marie.

Tawas, which was led by Stoll with 14 kills and Koroly with 20 assists, wraps up its season at 16-16-4.