Middletown – This is the time of year when high school kids, whose daily worries rarely eclipse a phone low on battery power, suddenly come face to face with finality. The last exam. The last day. The last game. The prom. Graduation. From the rhythms of insular, familiar, comfortable high school to the looming specter of college and its requisite challenges and uncertainties.

And while we all want to think our kids are what we see in the prom picture, reality is different. Our kids are about to graduate from the days of parental protection to spheres of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility. Which makes us all curious: How do we know if we’ve really taught them well?

The Spang family of East Lyme got their answer Sunday afternoon at Palmer Field. How well has young Matt, the East Lyme High senior, been taught? It was all there on the field at the Class L state championship game, the bitterest of bitter defeats for the Vikings, who were one strike away.

And then lost to Notre Dame in extra innings.

Spang, already the winning pitcher in two other state tournament games, was summoned from second base to close the game. East Lyme held a 2-0 lead. Runners on first and third, one out. You go get your senior. Your guy. The kid coach Jack Biggs would later call “the heart and soul of our program.”

And then it was 2-1, bases loaded, two outs. Spang had the count 2-2 to Dylan Reynolds, Notre Dame’s best hitter, .474 entering the game.

He hit him with a curveball.

Game tied.

One strike away no more.

Cue last season, when the Vikings lost the championship game by a run to North Haven, leaving enough runners on base to field a soccer team.

Would it happen again?

It did. Helped along by Spang’s throwing error at second base.

This just in: There are many, many professional athletes who would hide in the trainer’s room after such circumstances to avoid answering questions. But Matt Spang? He answered them all, fighting back tears.

Do you know how hard that is?

To work for something your whole life, get denied once, get another opportunity, have all the responsibility in your hands … and get denied again?

OK. It’s sports. For win or lose, not life or death. But heartbreak knows no distinctions sometimes.

“Curveball,” Spang said of the fateful pitch to Reynolds. “I pulled it too much. We could have won it right there.”

Spang was an unwitting protagonist Sunday in the theater that makes sports beat all. The season rode on every pitch he threw. The grandstand was berserk, except in the time Spang released his pitches. Then came momentary silence, some gasps, as if God hit the cosmic pause button, until the outcome of the pitch or play.

“So many emotions,” Spang said. “I gripped it too tight. Sucked that it happened in the state championship game.”

And even more for a kid who deserved better. As did all his teammates. Quite the group of kids. It should be noted that East Lyme, in the face of despondency, stood there along the first base line and clapped for their opponents as they walked one by one to home plate to collect medallions and the championship trophy.

“Two years in a row,” Spang said. “We had it in our hands. You feel like you let your team down.”

Then Spang paused and said, “It was a great run, but we expected to be here. To be honest, we’ll remember this a lot more than the other things.”

And you know what? That’s OK. It means they care a lot in Biggs’ program. Soon, when the emotions moderate and the little voices inside their heads become more rational, they’ll remember the brotherhood more than anything else. And they can look around their own league to see that not everybody gets to play on the big stage two years in a row.

Meantime, here’s wishing Spang the best at UConn-Avery Point. Turns out the Eastern Board umpires got it right by giving the kid their sportsmanship award. You can tell plenty about a person by how he or she acts in defeat. Matt Spang won everything but the game Sunday. The 06333 should be proud this is who represents the town.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro.