KIRWAN HEIGHTS — Lauren Balmert wiped tears from her flushed cheeks.

Justine Carrow consoled a teammate with a tight hug.

Coach Karen Martini simply took a deep breath, sighed and shrugged her shoulders.

One dream died for the Seneca Valley volleyball team at Chartiers Valley High School Thursday night. But there is still one left.

The Raiders fell behind two games to none against Upper St. Clair in the WPIAL Class AAA semifinal match, rallied to tie it at two before falling in the decisive game.

The 20-25, 23-25, 25-19, 25-21, 6-15 loss ends Seneca Valley's quest for a WPIAL title. It will play familiar foe North Allegheny at noon Saturday at Chartiers Valley High School in a consolation match to decide the third and final team to advance to the state tournament.

"I asked the girls when we were down to trust me and believe," Martini said. "I told them to trust me and believe me and win that game for me, and they did."

That third-game win got the Raiders rolling.

Megan Franz had six of her 15 kills and Balmert had five of her 12 service points in the third game.

Seneca Valley fell behind 15-11 in the fourth game, but it rallied again to score four of the final five points to stay alive.

Martini said the Raiders felt confident going into the fifth game, even though Upper St. Clair had beat them to 15 in each of the first four games.

Upper St. Clair did it again, but the Panthers had help: lots of experience.

Upper St.Clair had made a habit this season of cutting things close. That ended up being a good thing Thursday night.

"We seem to do this," said Upper St. Clair coach Yoko Nagao. "We've been through this before. Last year, we did this, too, and we would panic. This year, we haven't."

It would have been easy for the Panthers to break the glass over the panic button.

They fell behind quickly 2-0 in the fifth game, but scored 14 of the next 17 points to all but put the match away.

"You can't make mistakes against good teams like (Upper St.Clair)," Martini said. "You can't give up 11 points in one rotation. You could see they were getting frustrated instead of going one point at a time."

Balmert also had 33 assists and eight kills to go with her team-leading service points.

Sarah Beals added nine kills for the Raiders.

Seneca Valley's strength this season has been its deep rotation of hitters.

Upper St. Clair showed it has a pretty strong stable of spikers as well.

Katie Michenko had 14 kills and Stephanie Jones shook off a slow start and finished with 13 kills for Upper St. Clair.

"Everyone contributed," Nagao said. "We have some good hitters and we play as a team. That was the key for us."

Upper St. Clair will play Mount Lebanon at 6 p.m. Saturday in the WPIAL championship match. It is the first trip to the finals for Upper St. Clair in school history.

For Seneca Valley, there is little time to shake off the sting of this loss.

The Raiders don't want a repeat of last season when they lost a heartbreaker to Moon in the semifinals, then lost in the consolation match to end their season.

"They can do one of two things," Martini said. "They can lay down like they did last year or they can accept the WPIALis out of their hands, but the state isn't. They can be a state contender if they want. They just have to do it and win on Saturday."