In the weeks leading up to the PIAA state volleyball playoffs, one of the more common cliches you'd hear from Hempfield coach Mike Vogel was that only one team can win its final match - the champion.

Instead, by virtue of a questionable tiebreaking system, Hempfield was watching from the stands as Northern Allegheny defeated Spring Grove to win the 1999 state championship.

The Knights went out winners, but they didn't even make it out of the quarterfinals.

Talk about winning the battle but losing the war.

"There's clearly a flaw in the system," said Vogel on Sunday night. "But if I (complain) then it looks like I'm just whining. Still, I hope something will be done about this. I want something good to come out of it. The kids won their last match of the season, but they still went home. That doesn't seem fair."

Here's what happened:

The Knights defeated Spring Grove 15-8, 5-15, 15-10 in their head-to-head matchup in the quarterfinals. Hempfield, which was competing in Pool E, finished with a 2-1 record after falling 15-7, 15-5 to Lower Merion and defeating Montour 15-9, 15-13.

Spring Grove recovered from its loss to the Knights to post two-game victories over Lower Merion and Montour.

Lower Merion also defeated Montour.

That meant three teams finished with 2-1 records, but only two could advance to the semifinals.

According to the PIAA's tiebreaking system, the team with the best winning percentage in total games played would be declared the pool champion.

That title went to Spring Grove, which finished 5-2 in total games. The Knights went 4-3 in games, as did Lower Merion.

For the two teams left, it came down to their head-to-head meeting - which meant Lower Marion went on to the semis and the Knights retired to the sidelines.

So, even though Hempfield defeated Spring Grove in their head-to-head matchup, it was the Rockets who moved on, eventually losing to Northern Allegheny in the finals.

And even though Hempfield's 5-1 record in the state playoffs was second only to Northern Allegheny, the Knights could only root for Spring Grove in the finals, hoping at least to take home a moral victory.

"The kids were all pulling for Spring Grove to win," said Vogel. "If Spring Grove had beaten Northern Allegheny, the kids felt we would've been the unofficial state champions because we'd beaten Spring Grove. If that had happened, it would've been hard for me to argue with them."

Aside from the issue of fairness, the problem with the tiebreaking system in States is that it's inconsistent with the one in place in other tournaments.

In most other tournaments, there is no tiebreaking system. If three teams finish with the same record after pool play, they play each other again to determine who advances.

The teams draw straws, and the short straw gets a bye. Then the two remaining teams play one game, with the first team to 21 points declared the winner.

The team with the bye then faces the winner of the first game to decide who moves on.

If that system works in other tournaments, including the L-L League tourney, then why can't it be used in States?

"It was set up so there would be no possibility of a playoff," Vogel said. "On Saturday, there were three matches in the quarterfinals, two in the semis and on in the finals. That's a lot of matches. (The PIAA) didn't want another series of games to prolong the tournament.

"We've been at tournaments where if teams finished tied, they played off. Clearly that's what should've happened here. But that's life. It wasn't in our control."

Ironically, Spring Grove also benefited from the PIAA tiebreaking system on Friday, when the Rockets advanced over Lake Lehman by virtue of their better overall record in games.

For that to happen to the same team twice in one tournament doesn't seem fair.

"They were a team of destiny, that's for sure," Vogel said of the Rockets.

To his credit, Vogel was quick to point out on Sunday that the Knights could've avoided the whole tiebreaker problem if they'd played a good match against Lower Merion.

"It was in our hands," he said. "We had a tremendous match with Spring Grove in our first match, but we didn't play well against Lower Merion. Once we lost to them I was thinking, "we're out of here if Lower Merion loses to Spring Grove.' We saw it coming, but we didn't tell the kids. They had worked so hard this season."

Vogel said he hopes that the PIAA will try to rework its state playoff format for next season, so that the same thing doesn't happen to another team in the future.

"Hopefully, what this will do is make (the PIAA) sit down and say "hey, this isn't fair,"' he said.

The silver lining in all of this is that Hempfield's future seems bright. The Knights lose just three seniors from this year's squad, and will bring back an experienced, hungry lineup next season.

"We won the L-L League, we won Districts and we made it pretty far into States," Vogel said. "We only lost one match in States, and that was our first match loss of the season. We'll be in good shape next year."

But what bothered Vogel the most about the way the Knights were eliminated was the way that his three seniors - Ryan Wood, Jason Seibert and Jesse Porreca - finished their careers.

"That's the thing," he said. "The beauty of high school coaching is that there are always kids coming up for next year. I'm going to be there next year. The other coaches will be back too, and so will most of the kids.