MERCED--Feather River's Nainoa Kane-Yates hit a grand slam in the first inning but host Merced rallied back for an 8-7 win on Saturday afternoon to wrap up FRC's first road trip of the season.

With the win at the Blue Devil Diamond, Merced improved to 2-0 while the Golden Eagles mark evened up at 2-2.

"We played a very good team today and we battled them until the very end," said FRC head coach Terry Baumgartner. "We came up just a run short, but our guys played well enough to win. It was a playoff atmosphere with two of the top teams in the north battling it out."

Kane-Yates helped give his team a 5-0 lead in the top half of the first, but the Blue Devils would chip away at that lead and take over with a 8-5 distance in the ninth. FRC cut that margin to 8-7 but could get no closer. In addition to Kane-Yates blast, the Golden Eagles has two-hit games from Cooper Kitrel and Ryan Blanchard.

Baumgartner's team will take a shorter road trip next weekend for four games at Sacramento City (Thurs., 2:30 pm), American River (Fri., noon), Sierra (Sat., noon) and Sacramento City (Sat., 5 pm). 

"I am very happy with our first road trip of the year," Baumgartner added. "We played really well and learned a lot about ourselves individually and as a team. We are looking forward to next week's four-game trip to the Sacramento area."