GARY -- The seven-year-old theme for players taking part in the RailCats High School Baseball Challenge: win or lose, it's exciting just to play in a professional team's ballpark.

Hebron is no exception. The Hawks had to be excited to take the field where the Railcats call home two weeks ago against Hanover Central, but that excitement was erased quickly when they left the ballpark with as many hits as they had before the game began.

Saturday though, was potentially a reprieve day for the Hawks and as it turned out, a happier ending, thanks to a pretty good pitching outing of their own.

Larry Spore went the distance while striking out 14 as the Hawks beat West Side 8-2, their second victory in two days to all but put a 10-game losing streak to begin the season in their rear view mirror.

"It's been a pretty good weekend with two wins in a row," said Hebron third baseman Jared Haywood. "We have a lot of young kids on this team but our confidence level is as high as it can be right now."

Spore's performance was as high a level as it gets with only West Side center fielder Andrew Ingram's third inning single separating Spore from matching the no-hitter thrown by Jordan Rizzo against the Hawks on April 18.

And, just as Rizzo homered in that game, Spore did the same for the Hawks on Saturday, although it's safe to say Rizzo's traveled a little farther: Spore's home run was of the inside the park variety.

"I was throwing a variety of fast balls and curve balls and we tried to keep them equally distributed," said Spore, whose Hawks beat Morgan Township on Friday. "My pitching coach (Larry Samano) did a pretty good job of calling pitches today."

West Side made a run at Hebron in the fourth, scoring twice to make it a 6-2 game, but a two-run double by Hawks first baseman Cody Artuso in the bottom of the fourth helped Hebron regain the momentum.

"We have to take this and learn from it," said West Side catcher Jason Hayes. "We have some stuff we have to work on. We just have to get ourselves together and come back out and get a 'W.' "

Saturday was not a total loss for the Cougars. Losing pitcher Mike Swayne, plagued by three Cougars errors did have the strikeout pitch going, forcing nine Hawks to make a U-turn to the dugout. He also reached base twice via walks.

In Saturday's second game, just having good weather and its opponent show up must have been sigh of relief for Hammond.

When it was all said and done, pitcher Ricky Vasquez had a performance worth waiting for: the junior southpaw pitched a no-hitter while striking out 13 in a 13-1 Wildcats win over Bowman.

Just playing a game in the Railcats Challenge has been, well, a challenge for the Wildcats. Last season their originally scheduled game at the Steel Yard was cancelled because of rain as well as their rescheduled game.

This season, Hammond had an April 11 booking with Roosevelt and while the rain didn't show up, neither did Roosevelt which led to the rescheduled game with Bowman.

And Vasquez, the scheduled starter for all three previous cancellations, made the most of his Steel Yard appearance, at one time striking out 11 straight Eagles while also picking up two hits and an RBI while Josh Ready hit an inside the park homer to help Hammond coast to victory.