After 10-straight 20-win seasons, eight straight Big Sky titles, six Big Sky Coach of the Year awards and another brief NCAA tournament appearance Debby Colberg says that she and her team are stuck.

“There are a lot of teams (in the NCAA field) that we can beat — we’re right there,” the 29th year coach said. “I feel like we’re stuck in a rut.”

The Hornets ended their 2004 season the same way they ended the previous two — a loss in the first round of the NCAA tournament, this time 3-1 (26-30, 30-27, 30-22, 30-17) to St. Mary’s.

The only head volleyball coach Sacramento State has ever known said that this summer she and her staff will examine every piece of video they have of 2004 in order to revamp their system because, as assistant Ruben Volta put it, “We didn’t win the NCAA championship.”Colberg has been chosen The State Hornet’s Coach of the Year after guiding her team to a 25-8 record and another Big Sky tournament championship on the road at arch-nemesis Eastern Washington.

Colberg and Co. have had 25-win seasons and won Big Sky titles before — in fact, the championship win in Cheney, Wash., was the third-straight time the Hornets have taken out the Eagles on their home floor — but the adjustments and preparation the 29-year veteran put in were what set 2004 apart from other seasons in recent memory.

Two starters were forced out of the lineup in the same week; libero Kristin Lutes (broken knuckle) and right-side hitter Natalie Melcher (anemia) were both lost the week of Oct. 15 and missed weeks of competition.

The Hornets were in Utah and Idaho that weekend, making the annual Big Sky Weber State-Idaho State road trip when Lutes broke the last knuckle on her right hand going for a dig in the first game against Weber State — sidelining her until the Big Sky tournament — while Melcher wasn’t on the trip as she had been diagnosed with anemia days earlier.

Sac State lost to Idaho State, a team they hadn’t lost to since 1996, the next night, effectively ending their chance to host the conference tournament.

Three nights later, the Hornets rebounded and took out valley rival Pacific Tigers for the first time in seven years in front of a raucous Hornets Nest crowd.

“This win is satisfying because it was with the same lineup we couldn’t win with at Idaho State (last Saturday),” said Colberg after the Pacific victory.

Now well into offseason workouts, Colberg hopes that with the changes they implement next year will help the team in a tough schedule they face — with five new players. Even after losing three all-Big Sky performers from last year’s team, Colberg is already anxious to get on with the 2005 campaign.

“We wish the season were here already,” Colberg said. “We hate this wait.”

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John Parker can be reached at [email protected]