ATLANTA - Apr. 28, 2007 - Arenac Eastern coach Mike Sanchez got the answers he wanted as to what kind of potential his baseball team really had. Though his Eagles had to settle for a split at Saturday's Atlanta Invitational. AE's performance in losing 3-1 to fourth-ranked Johannesburg-Lewiston has him hopeful for a strong run through the rest of the Eagles' league schedule.

"(I knew) that we would see what kind of team we really have this weekend when the level of competition went up," he said. "We learned that we have a really strong team that has a good chance to win whenever we take the field."

The game remained scoreless through the first five innings as Brian Langstaff and his Joburg counterpart handled the opposing lineups with ease. The Eagles made some costly errors in the sixth that led to three unearned runs, and Skyler Thacker's sacrifice fly in the bottom of the sixth wasn't enough to overcome Joburg's lead.

"We made a few mistakes there at the end," Sanchez said. "We should have ended the inning without allowing any runs, but I couldn't be happier with the effort we played with. It wasn't the outcome we wanted, but we learned a lot about ourselves and were tested, which should help us a lot in our remaining league games."

AE rebounded with a 21-2 mercy win over Atlanta in the second game. Ten different Eagles reached base in the game, led by Thacker with four hits, five RBIs, four runs and three steals; Ethan Klopf with two hits, four runs and four steals; Thomas Klopf with two hits, three RBIs and four runs; Langstaff with four hits, two RBIs, three runs and two steals; Kyle White with four hit, four RBIs and two runs; and Jared Zobel with two hits, three runs and four steals. White had a triple and Langstaff and Thomas Klopf each had doubles.

White pitched the first three innings to earn the win. The Eagles (5-1) next travel to Hillman for a key NSL matchup on Thursday, May 3.