It just doesn’t pay to host the Big Sky volleyball tournament.

Sacramento State went into Cheney, Wash., for the third straight year to face the host Eagles of Eastern Washington and for the third straight year the Hornets won the conference championship 3-1 (30-21, 22-30, 30-18, 30-21) Saturday night. The last time Sac State hosted the tournament, coming in 2001, Eastern stung the Hornets 3-1.

“I give the credit to the players,” said head coach Debby Colberg who is in her 29th season on the Hornets sideline. “They’ve (won the championship) through some very tough conditions.

“The heckling started yesterday as they were just walking around the gym.”

Senior outside hitter and team captain Sandra Bandimere led the Hornets in the title match with yet another double-double, tallying 18 kills and 10 digs while hitting for a .341 hitting percentage. Bandimere was crowned the tournament’s most valuable player for her efforts in the title match and last night’s semifinal sweep of Montana State in which she had 14 kills and 21 digs.

With the score 8-7 in her team’s favor in the opening game Bandimere got her first kill of the night and served out two more points to put the Hornets up by four in the early stages. After that the closest the Eagles would get was three points on a pair of occasions before Sac State, which hit for a .500 clip in the first game pulled away and won 30-21.

“They just gave Sandra line tonight and she nearly took off their right-back’s head a couple of times,” Colberg said.

In game two Sac State jumped out to a 4-0 lead behind a kill from Shannon Arts, a pair of kills from Atlee Hubbard and one from Emily Wilson. Hubbard and Wilson were both named to the all-tournament team for their efforts.

From there Eastern caught up to tie the score at 10-10. The teams traded points until a Mallory Hook service error broke a 17-17 tie and ignited a 13-5 Eagles run led by Big Sky MVP Keva Sonderen, who notched three of her 12 kills in that run alone, as they took the second game 30-22 and a split going into the intermission.

Game three opened with a pair of attack errors from Eastern junior Lizzy Mellor as the Hornets seized an early 2-0 lead and did not trail the rest of the way as Bandimere dropped nine kills en route to a 30-18 win that brought Sac State to within one game of their eighth straight title.

“In that third game I could taste it,” Bandimere said. “(Eastern Washington) kind of folded and we knew we were going to win it.”

With the score knotted at 18-18 midway through the fourth game Shannon Arts toed the service line and produced an eight point service run, which featured five attack errors by the Eagles, to take a commanding 26-18 lead. Sac State held on to the lead and closed out the championship match on a Wilson kill from setter Stephanie Gamst, both of whom are seniors.

“I wanted to cry tears of joy, but it seemed like there was no liquid left in my body from playing so hard,” Wilson said.

Wilson, along with Bandimere earned her third Big Sky championship ring. But for Gamst, who has been with the program for five years after redshirting in 2001, the victory got her a fourth ring.

“It’s just kind of surreal,” Gamst said.

The weekend also marked the triumphant return to the lineup for Washington native Kristin Lutes, the team’s libero who has missed the last month of action with a broken finger. Lutes totaled 37 digs over the two matches in her first game action since the injury ocurred at Weber State on Oct. 15.

“Having watched and learned so much in the past month, I didn’t feel out of place at all coming back,” Lutes said.

Winners of the last eight regular season and/or tournament championships, the Hornets get an automatic bid to play in the NCAA tournament which begins Dec. 2 at campus sites of the top 16 teams in the country as rated by the NCAA tournament committee.

“I’m looking forward to (the NCAA tournament),” said Hubbard, who transferred to Sac State from Rhode Island prior to this season. “We all know what we’re capable of, we’ve seen it and we’re going to be fired up to play.”