No coach enjoys having his team lose a big game, but sometimes a coach’s agony of defeat can be tempered by knowing it took a great performance to beat his team.

 So while North Kingstown baseball coach Kevin Gormley certainly wasn’t celebrating the morning after his Skippers dropped a 5-0 decision to Hendricken in a title-deciding game of the Division I state tournament, he took some solace in the fact it was a special effort by Hendricken star pitcher Chris Costantino that beat the Skippers.

 “Chris was as dominant as I have ever seen him,” Gormley said Friday about Costantino’s three-hit, shutout effort in Thursday night’s game.

 “His fastball was 5-7 mph harder than it was on Saturday night against South Kingstown. He deserves a tremendous amount of credit,” Gormley said about the Hendricken star, who earlier on Thursday had been drafted by the Red Sox in the 49th round of the Major League Baseball draft.

Even Costantino felt the 88-pitch, seven-inning, complete-game effort was one of his all-time best mound performances.

 Was this one of your best, Costantino was asked of his pitching performance after the game.

 “Yeah, it probably was,” said the 6-foot-2, 220-pound right-hander.

 Costantino struck out nine and walked only four en route to the triumph that completed a perfect record for Hendricken in the double-elimination, regional-qualifying and state-championship tournaments and gave the Hawks their second straight state title and fifth state crown in the last seven years.

 After giving up two hits in the second inning, he only allowed one hit and three base runners over the final five innings.

 So how did you stay focused on pitching in a high school game only a few hours after you had been drafted by the Red Sox, Constantino also was asked after the game.

 “We worked so hard for this all year,” he said. “Everybody behind me wanted this as much as I did, so it wasn’t too hard to give it my all out there.”

Making the most of opportunity

 One of the great things about high school sports is that some unlikely hero is always emerging — like North Kingstown’s James Fede.

 Fede, a junior outfielder, had played in only five games and only had two plate appearances without a hit before the start of the playoffs. But when Gormley called on him to pinch-hit with North Kingstown trailing by two runs in the bottom of the seventh in their loser’s-bracket final against South Kingstown on Wednesday, Fede answered the call.

 With one out and two runners on, Fede had two strikes on him when he laced a line single to right field, scoring a run. It turned out to be the only hit North Kingstown had in what became a three-run seventh-inning comeback that gave the Skippers a 4-3 victory and a berth in the state title round against Hendricken.

Perfect achievement

 I know it’s Division II and that only 21 teams play, compared with the 28 teams that play in the higher level of competition in Division I.

 But the fact that Mount St. Charles’ Vaughn Hayward never lost a game in three years as a starting pitcher for Mount is an amazing accomplishment.

 Haywood closed out his outstanding high school career with a complete-game, four-hit performance in the 3-2 eight-inning victory over Prout Thursday night that gave the Mounties their first state baseball title in 74 years.

Meo gains college honor

 On the Interscholastic League baseball alumni scene, Anthony Meo, the former Cranston West pitcher who earned All-State honors in both 2007 and 2008, was one of the top freshman college baseball players in the country this spring while playing for Coastal Carolina University.

 This week Meo was named to the first-team All-Ping freshman baseball team at starting pitcher. The Ping award goes along with freshman All-American honors that Meo had received earlier from both Louisville Slugger and the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association.

 Meo compiled a 9-2 record this season in 17 mound appearances. He struck out 68 in 76 innings while holding the opposition to a .233 average. In addition to the All-American freshman honors, he also earned first-team All-Big South Conference honors as a starting pitcher.

Ineligible for draft

 With the major-league draft earlier this week, some people were wondering why Meo wasn’t chosen, especially after such a great freshman season.

 Under Major League Baseball rules, once a player enrolls at a four-year college he is ineligible to be drafted until after his junior year. So Meo will not be available for the draft until the spring of 2011.

Congrats all!

 And finally, once again the Pawtucket Red Sox and Amica Insurance made the state championships a special event with their sponsorship of both the Division I and II tournaments.

 It was a job well done by everybody, even if Mother Nature didn’t supply any warm, shirt-sleeve-type baseball weather for the fans.