Extra Inning Win Moves FRC into First Place Tie

QUINCY--On April 11 after 11 innings, the Feather River Golden Eagles have moved into a first-place tie in the Golden Valley Conference with the Butte College Roadrunners.

Andrew Lehmann's single in the bottom of the 11th capped a 5-4 extra time victory for FRC over Shasta College, who moved to 15-4 in conference play and to 26-7 overall. That equals Butte's conference record (15-4), with Lassen College also even in the loss column at 13-4.

The Golden Eagles now have a chance, weather permitting, to inch past Butte on Friday when they take on Shasta again. Butte's scheduled contest on Friday with Redwoods has already been postponed because of expected rain.

Thursday's game was a wild one in Quincy, in front of 196 at the Eagles Nest. The contest was a 2-1 pitcher's duel through the first six innings, with FRC's Tyler Stolfich and Shasta's Ian Bauer locked in and sending batters back to the dugout. The Golden Eagles scored the tying run in the seventh on Reed Alexander's RBI-double to make it 2-2. 

That's the way it stayed through nine regular innings, and the tenth. In the 11th, with the international tiebreaker rule in effect, the Knights took advantage of the free base runner and Brenden Eberle's home run to take a 4-2 lead. 

But the Golden Eagles, with a little help, rallied back in the bottom half of the inning. Using the free baserunner, two walks and two hit batters, they scored twice without a hit. With the bases still loaded an no outs on the scoreboard, Lehmann laced a single to score Kolt Kurzman with the winning run.

Lehmann, Jared Stevenson and Alexander had two hits each for FRC. Stolfich pitched the first 5.2 innings and gave up only two earned runs, walked one and fanned ten Shasta batters. Will Page-Allen was next and was fantastic out of the pen with 5.1 innings, just one hit, one run, one walk and six strikeouts to earn the win. 

FRC will get right back to action today against Shasta with a noon contest versus the Knights.