TOAST -- All season, Starmount's volleyball seniors have talked about what kind of legacy they wanted to leave.

On Wednesday night, they made sure it involved keeping all of the Mountain Valley 2A championship hardware in Boonville for another year.

Pushed to the limit by a determined North Surry team, the Rams rallied for a 23-25, 25-20, 28-30, 25-22, 15-13 victory in the conference tournament title game.

Starmount, which beat the Greyhounds in four games for the regular season title last week, never led in the fifth game until scoring the final two points -- one off a block by all-conference seniors Jana Matthews and Meme Brown and the other off a hit by Brown that the Greyhounds couldn't return.

"Every since my sophomore year, we've won and everyone has known that Starmount is the team to beat," said setter Jordan Raye, voted both the conference regular season and tournament MVP. "This is my senior year, so I said, 'Let's go out big.'"

In terms of state playoff seeding, this game didn't mean anything. The Rams had already locked up the MVAC's No. 1 seed by virtue of winning the regular season and North Surry was already guaranteed the No. 2 seed.

But the contest, played at North Surry High, had a high-intensity playoff atmosphere from the outset. The play on the court was high-caliber from start to finish as well, with the match lasting more than two hours.

"I'm telling you, that team pushed us harder than anyone else all year," said Rams coach Jon Symons, whose teams have won the last three MVAC tourney titles. "To be honest with you, I feel very fortunate to have won tonight. We just happened to make a couple of plays at the right time. That's basically it."

North Surry seemed in control of the decisive game five, scoring five of the first six points. Starmount pulled to within 5-4 and eventually things up 10-10 after a pair of Matthews kills (including one hard-hit shot between two blockers).

But the Greyhounds answered by getting the next two points for a 12-10 edge. A kill from Courtney Campbell made the score 13-11 North -- two points away from a tournament championship.

But that would be the Greyhounds' final point of the night. North Surry served the next ball out. Then Starmount's Taylor Moxley put a serve in play that the 'Hounds couldn't return, tying the game at 13-13.

North Surry coach Shane Slate called a timeout, but the Rams just refused to let the game, match and tournament trophy get away when they returned to the court.

"They weren't going to lose," Symons said. "Everything we talked about all season came to fruition."

Despite being ganged up on at the net, Matthews still finished with a game-high 28 kills. Brown added 12 kills. Both were perfect from the service line, going a combined 24 of 24 with three aces.

Raye dished out 41 assists as the team's primary setter and also managed eight kills. Rosie Crissman had seven kills for the victors, while Brett Doss had five.

Taylor Moxley made 14 digs from her libero post. Brinsley Stewart added two kills and two blocks. Cory Hutchens, who had a big night of serving in the tournament semifinals, proved clutch behind the line again, finishing 17 of 18 with two aces.

The teams traded wins in the first two games, and Starmount had a chance to take a 2-1 lead in the match. But the Rams couldn't convert after earning a 25-24 lead in game three. North got a game-saving tip over the net by Nicole Rumplasch that handcuffed the Rams and tied the game at 25-all.

Starmount had another game point at 26-25 but North tied it up again. The Greyhounds had leads of 27-26, 28-27 and 29-28 before Rumplasch came up big again, this time spiking a ball too low for the Rams' back line to return.

Starmount's fortunes started to rise again when Symons inserted Olivia Gough into the front-line rotation in game four. The athletic freshman started altering North Surry's strategy of pounding down kills from the middle of the court.

"She got some hands on the ball and established herself, then they had to push the ball to other places," Symons said. "That made it easier for us."

Starmount has now beaten North Surry three times this season. But with each match, the Greyhounds have gotten closer and closer to victory.

"We're still young," Slate said after Wednesday's meeting. "In the match we played at their place, we grew up. We grew up even more tonight."

Courtney Campbell had 20 kills, 24 digs and went 19 of 20 with an ace from the service line to lead North Surry. Emily Culler was 18 of 18 from the service line and had 20 digs, Morgan Bunker had 12 kills and five blocks and Nicole Rumplasch had 11 kills and 10 blocks.

"If you paid five bucks, you got your money's worth tonight," Slate said. "I thought it was two good teams going back and forth and nobody stopped coming after it."

Starmount advanced to the 2A state title game a year ago, losing to Cardinal Gibbons on the final night of the season. West Henderson may be the team to beat in the 2A West this year, sporting a 20-0 record coming into the state playoffs. Cardinal Gibbons, which graduated its 6-foot-5 twin towers, is 26-0 in the East.

A potential Starmount-West Henderson match-up would happen, like last year, in the 2A West title game.

"We're looking to at least get to the semifinals against West Henderson again," Raye said.

Just something else to add to the Starmount seniors' impressive legacy.

-- Justin Nuzzo of The Mount Airy News contributed to this Ripple story