Golden Eagles Run Way to Season Opening Win

TAFT--In the 2026 Feather River College season preview, head coach Terry Baumgartner said that his pitching would be a team strength early and that the hitting would eventually have to catch up.

Today, in the 2026 opener, it was the Golden Eagle bats, and more specifically their legs that led the way to 10-7 win over host Taft on Friday afternoon at Cougar Field. Feather River stole eight bases and spaced out six singles to jump the start the year at 1-0. 

The two squads will square off again tomorrow in a Saturday doubleheader that is scheduled to start at 10 a.m.

Noah Carrington and Legend Lancaster had two hits each and grabbed a stolen base to pace the offense. Both had RBI singles in the fourth inning, and Lancaster drove in two runs in the fifth. The Golden Eagles scored three times in the second, fourth and fifth innings to account for nine of their ten runs in the contest. 

Both freshmen, Lancaster (Hilo, Hawai`i) drove in three runs and Carrington (Sacramento) also walked twice to reach base four times. In addition to the pair of stolen bases by that duo, FRC had two bags each from Christian Obos and Walker DesRosier. 

That helped the Golden Eagles work around trouble on the mound, where five FRC pitchers combined to issue 11 walks. After the Cougars took a 5-3 lead, Kani Thomas helped get the pitching back on track with four innings of relief work, allowing four hits, two earned runs, three walks and he fanned six. The sophomore from Poway got the win, with Marcus Maeder (Colfax) nailing down the save with two innings of scoreless one-hit work. 

After the twinbill on Saturday, FRC will play Merced on Sunday (noon) before returning home.