Box Score 1 | Box Score 2 ARCATA – Balls are flying out of the HSU softball field so often, there is not a question that there will be home runs. It has instead become a matter of which of the home runs will be more significant. The Jacks hit six more in a doubleheader sweep of Notre Dame de Namur (7-4, 7-3) on Tuesday.
 
One could argue for Chrissy Stalf's 11th of the season and 40th of her career as the most significant. She is now one shy of the California Collegiate Athletic Association mark held by Cal State Bakersfield's Krista Hernandez (2004-07).
 
Or how about the first dinger of the season for Andrea Chavez? She was the last one in the lineup to go deep this year.
 
Then there was the 250-foot bomb in a series of colossal bombs from Hannah Williams for her eighth of the year.
 
But the hottest of the hot bats belongs to Tonya Walker who hit a home run in each of the games against Notre Dame, and now has five home runs in the last five games, and seven for the season. She has the second best slugging percentage (.741) on the team, behind Stalf (.897).
 
Walker missed the Cal State Monterey series while she was being observed for a possible concussion suffered against Chico State. After being cleared to play, she was relegated to pinch-running and pinch-hitting duty until she came off the bench to hit a three-run homer against Stanislaus.
 
“Being on the bench the small amount of time I was lit a fire under me, I guess you could say,” Walker said. “I didn't like it so I worked harder. There's a battle in the outfield right now for playing time, so you've got to keep hitting the ball or you're going to sit. We're winning; we're happier; we're going to work harder.”
 
“Walker seems to get the hit when we need it,” said HSU head coach Frank Cheek. “She opened the game up for us.”
 
Walker's three-run homer in the third inning of the second game put the Jacks up 4-0. Katie Obbema (6-1) went the distance for Humboldt, scattering three hits. Lizzie Perez (11-4) won the opener.
 
Humboldt improves to 20-9 on the season, while Notre Dame de Namur drops to 15-10.
 
“Our first four or five hitters are tough, and we're hitting the long ball,” Cheek said. “We're not getting doubles, we're getting the long ball. Which makes my job easier. When we're down 0-1, we can come back with one swing of the bat. We have people who can knock it out of here so being down 0-1 isn't bad. Fortunately, we're hitting the ball, and we'd like to continue along those lines.”
 
Humboldt has 55 home runs on the season to lead the nation. The CCAA record for home runs in a season is 64. The NCAA record is 112.
 
Stalf, the Worth/CCAA Player of the Week, had her consecutive hit streak broken at the end of the first game. Her 10 consecutive hits tied her for the 16th best streak in NCAA history. She had reached base 13 at-bats in a row and is on a seven-game hitting streak.
 
Shelby Reali (6-4) got the loss for the Argonauts in game one, and Sammy McConvey (7-4) lost the opener. McConvey came into the game with an ERA of 1.26.
 
“McConvey is a really good pitcher. We faced her last year and she got us,” said Serena Aragones, who went 3-for-3 against her in the first game. “We're pretty good at adjusting this year so being down 0-1 is nothing to us. We just pull out our Humboldt game plan, which is home runs.”
 
“We've got good leadership with Aragones and Stalf,” Cheek said of the two seniors.
 
Humboldt hits the road for a weekend series at San Francisco State (7-9 CCAA, 13-12 overall) with doubleheaders on Friday (1 p.m.) and Saturday (11 a.m.)