Sand Volleyball Hosts Second Annual Sacramento State Invitational

The Sacramento State women’s sand volleyball team will host an eight-team tournament this weekend at the Sacramento Softball Complex.

Sac State held this tournament for the first time last year, which was also the Hornets’ first year in the sport. The tournament consisted of seven teams and seven matches in one day. This year the tournament has eight teams and there will be a total of 13 matches over three days.

Sac State will play in five of the 13 matches beginning today at 3 p.m. against the Mustangs of Cal Poly. Later this evening the Hornets will square off against San Francisco at 6 p.m.

Other opponents for the Hornets will include Cal and Santa Clara on Saturday and Boise State on Sunday, which will conclude the tournament. Cal is the only school that Sac State earned victories against last year and its only two wins in school history.

Other teams that will be at the invitational are nationally ranked St. Mary’s and the University of Pacific. The Hornets have already played St. Mary’s this season, losing 5-0, and will play Pacific on April 13 in Stockton.

Sac State will look to rebound after losing its opening match on the road on March 19 against the Gaels. Despite the loss, co-head coach Jason Borchin was pleased with the way the team competed.

“I really like the energy that we played with and the girls weren’t as nervous as I had anticipated they would be, especially with a lot of young players,” Borchin said.

Borchin said that playing a nationally ranked team in their opening match is a good thing for the team and will help the Hornets strive to be better. He said that the team has really built off of that first match.

After playing its first match of the season, the team and the coaches were able to look at film and see what areas needed to be improved before the upcoming tournament.

‘We struggled in our setting and our attacking, which are a couple of areas that were addressed this week in practice,” Borchin said.

Borchin said that the players have been focused and have worked extremely hard this week.

“I think we have improved a lot since our last match,” Borchin said. “We (the coaches) don’t have expectations as far as wins and losses go, but we fully expect to play much better this weekend.”

Despite losing all of the dual-matches in its opener, the Hornets will keep all the pairings the same for this weekend’s tournament. The No.1 team will be the duo of Kayla Beal and Katie Aprile.

The No.2 team will be Sloan Lovett and Lauren Aikels; the No.3 pairing will be Morgan Stanley and Madeline Cannon; No.4 will be the duo of Lexie Skalbeck and Chelcy Motes and the No.5 team will be Courtney Dietrich and Kendall LaVine.

Garrett Reindeau can be reached on twitter @SH_Sports