With tension building in the bottom of the 11th inning of a thrilling softball duel that had lasted nearly three hours, Nikki Cinque strode the plate and what did she do?

“I relaxed,” said the senior pitcher who had entered the game as the designated hitter in the seventh. “I just sat back and told myself, ‘Breathe Nikki.'”

Cinque drilled the first pitch she saw deep to right-centerfield and out for a two-run walk off homerun to lift the Hornets to a 3-1 victory over Syracuse in the first game for both teams on the second day of the Capital Classic Softball Tournament. Freshman pitcher Cassie Cervantes did her part as well, striking out a school-record 19 batters while allowing four hits and issuing five walks.

Cinque, a native of nearby Elk Grove and former Sheldon High and Sacramento City College standout, hit her second homerun in as many games as she also hit a towering three-run blast to left field on Friday night against Southern Utah. Cinque said she didn’t know if her shot on against the Thunderbirds was out but that she had no doubt about her walk-off hit Saturday.

“I knew this one was gone,” said Cinque who had her hands above her head fists pumped when she rounded first. “I felt like I hit this one really hard.”

The blast signaled the end of a marathon of a game in which both teams combined to strand 22 runners and neither could push a run across from second base with no out in each of the extra innings until Cinque’s homer due to the international tie-breaker rule.

The Hornets (13-10) had many opportunities to put the game away earlier as they left the bases loaded twice ?” one time with the bases were full and just one out. Sac State’s best chance to put away the Orange (9-13), however, came in the top of the seventh inning as Lindy Winkler hit a line drive to right field that appeared to hit the top of the wall and go over which would have been a game-winning homer about 90 minutes before Cinque’s bomb in the 11th. The umpires ruled the ball a ground rule double and Winkler, who had been in a home run trot was forced to double back to second base.

“I definitely think it went over,” Winkler said, “but it’s out of my control what the umpires call.”

Cervantes held the Orange hitters in check and got better as the game wore on. Under the international tie-breaker rule a runner is placed on second base to begin each inning after the seventh to hasten scoring. Beginning each half-inning with a Syracuse runner behind her, Cervantes backed her team up by striking out two hitters in the eighth, ninth and tenth innings.

“I focused on me and the catcher and made sure I breathed,” Cervantes said.

Winkler, who scored the Hornets’ other run in the first inning sliding around Orange catcher Amy Kelley, may have made a game-saving play in the top of the 11th on a throw from centerfield to get Dani Stuart in a run-down.

“I told myself ‘she’s not going to score,'” Winkler said of the perfect strike she threw to Schloredt from the centerfield grass. “I just threw it.”

For Cervantes, who said that she had something to strive for after striking out 17 Iowa batters on Wednesday, the single-game strikeout record is now hers. She has also struck out 51 batters in her last three starts but was more outwardly focused after the Syracuse game.

“I’m really happy for the team that we won this one,” Cervantes said.