The Sacramento State softball team lost on Wednesday afternoon to the Cal Berkeley Golden Bears by a final score of 6-1.

Kicking off the first game of a 4-game road trip, Sac State (13-13) fell behind early on in the game. Hornet starting pitcher Celina Matthias, who has pitched in 24 of the team’s 25 games, was in trouble from the start, giving up a hit and a walk, yet almost wiggling her way out of trouble before getting stung by a 2-out 3-run home run to left field.

Matthias sat the Bears down in order in the second inning, but would give up an unearned run in the third inning. After the first three batters of the inning got on base via two hits and an error, Matthias minimized the damage to just a single run off a Sac fly.

The Golden Bears (14-12-1) would get to Matthias again, however, this time for two runs in the fourth inning. She would make it out of the frame, but that was it for her day. Senior pitcher Kaitlyn Yerby came in for the start of the fifth and dominated, giving up just a single to the Bear offense in two scoreless innings to finish the game.

By the time Yerby came in, however, the game was too far out of reach for Sac State. The Hornet offense was quiet for most of the day, collecting just five hits and a walk against Cal starter Katie Sutherland-Finch, who pitched a complete game for the Bears. Sac State had a chance to cut into the early 3-0 hole with a two-on, one-out situation in the third inning, but couldn’t manage to capitalize.

The only Hornet run came courtesy of a solo-shot in the top of the sixth by Sasha Margulies, who yanked a pitch over the right field wall for her second hit of the day and her first home run of the year. It was also the Hornets’ only extra-base hit on the afternoon, and they would manage just one more single after that.

Sac State committed just a single error, continuing a streak of good defense for the squad, with the team ranking within the top 60 NCAA Division I teams in the nation in terms of fielding percentage.

The Golden Bears broke Sac State’s five-game winning streak and continued their dominance over them, with the result of the game also extending the Bear’s winning streak over the Hornets to seven. Second baseman Zamari Hinton also saw her personal hit streak come to an end at 13 games, and first baseman Jessica Ravetti also saw her own five-game hit streak broken.

The Hornets continue their road trip Friday afternoon at 1:30 p.m. in the first of a double header with the Montana Grizzlies before finishing with a third game against them on Saturday. This is the second year of competition for Montana’s softball team, losing all three games against the Hornets last year.