Keep telling yourselves that, Hornets.

Under the tutelage of first-year assistant head coach Cara Hoyt, the Sacramento State softball team is on pace to break nearly every program batting record in the Division I era ?” and they’re doing it by talking to themselves.

“We all go to the plate telling ourselves, ‘I hit .400, I hit .400,’ ” said senior Nikki Cinque who splits time as a pitcher and designated player ?” and is hitting .297 with three home runs.

The Hornets are hitting .284 as a team (the program record for a single season is .265 set in 2000), have clubbed 15 home runs (one shy of the program record) and are slugging .405 (50 points above the team record). Six players are hitting above .300 led by senior center fielder Lindy Winkler’s scintillating .406 batting average.

The improvement is astronomical when compared to the 2005 season ?” a successful 30-23 campaign in which the Hornets were second in conference ?” when coach Kathy Strahan’s squad hit .249, slugged .307 and hit just six homers.

Eight returning Hornets are currently hitting above their career averages and freshman Jamie Schloredt is third on the team with a .333 batting average and is leading the team in home runs with four so far this season.

Strahan attributes much of that improvement to Hoyt, whose impact, she said, “-has been in a word: huge.”

Despite that endorsement and the notion that there’s been a complete overhaul, Hoyt is much more low-key about her contributions.

“I don’t change big things, I change little things,” Hoyt said. “I give them little ideas so they can see the big picture.”

But the big reason, players and coaches agree, is the mental game.

“Hitting is about 80 percent mental,” said Winkler, who in addition to her team-leading average has clubbed all three homers of her career in the past three weeks. “You have to be confident to be successful.”

Hoyt instructs the players to tell themselves that they do in fact hit .400 ?” not that they should, could or will but that they do ?” in order to mentally prepare for each at-bat.

“If you tell yourself you’ll do something then you’ll do it,” Hoyt said.

Perhaps more impressive than the numbers the Hornets have put together is the time frame. Five weeks ago, following a doubleheader sweep at ninth-ranked UC Berkeley, Sac State sat at 4-9 and was just hitting .226.

“I though it would take us the whole year to get this down,” Hoyt said. “It takes a while to get the idea.

“But they’ve been workaholics. They really want to do it and right now it’s exciting.”

The Hornets now take their offensive show on the road to Loyola Marymount ?” another team that hits the ball well ?” this weekend to open Pacific Coast Softball Conference play.

The Lions celebrated their 2005 conference championship at Shea Stadium last year as they clinched it with a doubleheader sweep of the second-place Hornets on the final weekend of the season.

“It’s going to be a long five weeks (of conference play),” Strahan said. “I hope we can put it all together when we need to.”

John Parker can be reached at [email protected]