Cleaning out the notebook for the high school spring sports season ...

• Congrats to Fitch softball and coach Arielle Cooper on the No. 1 ranking in the final GameTimeCT/Register poll.

Fitch finished No. 1 for one reason (aside from its 27-0 record): Cooper had the stones to schedule then-No. 1 Southington (at Southington) during the regular season. Fitch snapped Southington's 77-game win streak via shutout, an achievement that resonated with the voters.

Moral of the story: See what happens when you challenge your kids instead of scheduling "Tech, Tech, Tech, Tech" outside the ECC?

• Note to the Cheshire folks who have their boxers in the bundle over their school's No. 2 ranking behind Fitch: It's a ranking. Not a life sentence. What, you can't be happy with your own 27-0 record and Class LL title? As a wise man once said: "Miserable is a good thing. If you start your day miserable, nobody else can screw up your day."

• Mad props and bon mots — again — to the folks at West Haven High (athletic director John Capone and everyman Chris Everone) and Middletown High (athletic director Elisha DeJesus and staff) for their first-rate work running the baseball and softball tournaments.

Can we just do everything there from now on?

• How's this for a story (per Jim Bransfield of the Middletown Press):

Isaiah Negretti-Flannery, the pitcher from Wolcott baseball who eliminated Waterford, was also the winning pitcher in the Class M state title game.

Negretti-Flannery's stepfather visited his own father's grave ("Grandpa Marvin") the day of the game. In the Jewish tradition, visitors leave small rocks on the gravestone. Negretti-Flannery's dad picked up one of the special stones, brought it to his son and told him to put it somewhere on Palmer Field so that Grandpa Marvin would be on the field with him on championship night.

At 6:30, Negretti-Flannery put the stone on the warning track against the fence in left-center field. In the bottom of the seventh, Wolcott's Ray Bartoli hit the game-winning home run.

It flew out of Palmer Field in left-center, directly over the stone from Grandpa Marvin's grave.

• Not sure there's a coaching feat in Connecticut lore and legend that beats Amity baseball coach Sal Coppola's fourth straight Class LL title.

Here's why: Baseball is by far the most difficult sport in which to win a state championship. You can lose to anybody with a good pitcher. And Amity's won roughly 20 straight state tournament games. Amazing.

And to think some of those aggrieved parents down there wanted to fire Coppola a few years ago.

• Have high school sports ever been more popular in Connecticut?

(Rhetorical question).

The crowds this weekend were tremendous in most sports. That's after another successful basketball run at Mohegan Sun Arena.

• Best single play I saw all spring:

NFA baseball at Amity. An Amity player hits one off the fence. NFA outfielder Andy Grant retrieves the ball, spins and unloads a strike to second. On a line. From the fence.

• Tremendous spring at Stonington. Just about every sport won something. That's not easy at a relatively small school with only so many kids.

How Now Brown Town.

• Speaking of the Wolcott kid Negretti-Flannery: He pitched 29 of his team's 35 innings in the state tournament.

Stay tuned to many of these same stations to see the next time he can lift his right arm without wincing.

• God bless high school softball.

The Fitch-Masuk final lasted 1 hour, 13 minutes.

• OK, so explain this one:

Northwest Catholic is allowed to compete in Class M in baseball and softball.

This was a line from the Hartford Courant's graduation story: "Students in Northwest Catholic's graduating class are from 24 different towns in Connecticut and Massachusetts."

Hence, Northwest Catholic, with kids from 24 towns and two states, competes for the same trophy as Montville, Stonington and Waterford, who have kids from one town in one state.

That's a joke.

And the CIAC lets it happen.

• High school football begins Sept. 9.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro.