Sacramento State hosted the University of Charlotte 49ers and San Jose State Spartans in the inaugural Hornet Round Robin softball tournament this weekend.

Over the three-day tournament, the Hornets played Charlotte three times and San Jose twice. In all five games played, the green and gold were unable to secure a win.

The five losses added to the Hornets losing streak, which currently sits at seven games. Sac State’s current record has now dropped to 3-12 overall.

San Jose won the tournament with four wins, Charlotte was second with tree wins and two losses and Sac State was third with five losses and no wins.

The Hornet pitching staff had a hard time stifling the hitting of both teams over the weekend. They allowed over six runs a game with their opponents hitting .373. Hornet pitcher Shelby Voelz lasted just three innings in her final start of the tournament, earning her a third straight loss.

In one of the games against San Jose State, Voelz gave up nine hits and eight earned runs. Reliever Jacquelyn Serrano faired a little better but was also unable to cool the bats of San Jose State. Serrano went the remaining four innings, giving up five hits and three earned runs.

Head coach Kathy Strahan felt that the tournament was a learning experience for her young players to learn softball at the college level.

“I know that this weekend, with the good competition we saw, taught a lot of our individual athletes things that they need to work on,” Strahan said. “It was just the greatest classroom possible, for me to be able to teach this young team how to compete and what we have to do skills wise to get better.”

Though pitching suffered during the three days, batting was not a problem for the Hornets, yet runs were hard to come by. Sac State hit .300 versus its opponents and averaged nine hits a game, while averaging three runs per game.

Erin Jones hit her first career home run for the Hornets and teammate Jessica Abelia went 3-4 with three runs scored against San Jose State on the final day. Additionally, over those five games, Abelia went 7-16, with a .438 batting average and was among four Hornet batters to average .400 or better for the tournament.

Abelia said she feels the team will get better if everyone pulls their weight.

“I just want to do my part offensively and defensively so that the team is success,” she said.

For Molly Smith, said she feels the team can be better with a little more focus at the plate.

“I think we need to lay off junk pitches and wait for our pitch and I think we would be an amazing team,” Smith said. “I think if we just did that, there would be no team that could compete with us.”

Sac State takes to the field again on Wednesday in a doubleheader versus Nevada starting at 1 p.m. at Shea Stadium.

Matt Harrington can be reached at [email protected]