Westerly's Andrew Springer runs in front of East Greenwich's Nick Ross in the 1,500-meter run at Saturday's state meet.

Journal photo / Kathy Borchers

They started practicing on what usually were cold, and often damp March days.

The baseball and softball players compressed 18-game regular-season schedules into eight weeks of competition, and the boys tennis players completed both their regular season and playoffs in only two months despite a spring that saw nearly 200 baseball, softball and tennis contests postponed by rain.

Mother Nature didn’t treat the lacrosse players, track performers or golfers much better.

Through it all, there also were proms, senior projects to complete, college decisions to be made, class days and a host of other end-of-school activities.

I have often said with everything that’s going on in their lives, the spring can be the toughest season for high school students to stay focused on athletic achievement. Yet, somehow, the state’s high school athletes delivered a host of exciting, and often inspirational performances this spring.

One of the all-time best came at Brown Stadium on Saturday, when Andrew Springer led Westerly to its first boys state track titles by winning three individual running events and helping a Westerly relay team capture another title.

This school year, Springer became one of the great Rhode Island high school sports success stories.

He was always good in track. He set state records in the 1,500 and 3,000 meters last year as a junior. Before this year, however, he ran track only six months a year. Every fall, he played for the Westerly soccer team, because soccer was the sport he grew up playing with his high school friends.

But this past, fall he ran cross country for the first time because he realized his future was in distance running.

Not only did he become the best high school cross-country runner in Rhode Island, he became one of the best in the nation. He continued delivering sensational performances through the winter indoor season, winning the 1,000, 1,500 and 3,000 titles. He already is ticketed to go to Georgetown on a track scholarship in the fall, so he easily could have closed out his high school career against Rhode Island competition by simply running a couple of races at the state meet and concentrate on posting times that would have his name in the state record book for a long time.

But the great ones think beyond personal goals. And you have the feeling Springer wanted to do more than just leave his personal mark on the state high school track scene. That he wanted his teammates to feel the thrill of winning a state team championship, something that no Westerly boys had experienced in 62 prior years of Interscholastic League competition.

So he ran the grueling distance triple –– the 800, 1,500 and 3,000 –– the three longest races in Rhode Island high school outdoor track, and won them all. He personally accounted for 30 of Westerly’s winning total of 69 points with his three victories, and also played a major role in adding two more points with his performance as a member of the winning 4x400 relay.

And while Springer’s performance definitely was something special, it certainly wasn’t the only remarkable effort by a high school athlete this spring.

For example, how often does a two-time defending state champion come into a title match as a prohibitive underdog?

But that’s the situation South Kingstown’s Kyle Burke found himself in this spring in his quest to win a third consecutive state singles tennis titles. Burke had lost both of his regular-season matches against Wheeler’s Jess Frieder, but in the state singles title match, he won his third title with an amazing three-set comeback victory over Frieder.

“Talk about grit, that’s the definition right here,” South Kingstown tennis coach Andy Carr said, after Burke came back from losing the first set, 6-1, to win the title with 7-5, 6-4 victories in the second and third sets.

A week later, Burke won another big singles match in the state team championship match against Hendricken, but he wasn’t the big story that day.

Instead, the spotlight shined on two very unlikely heroes, South Kingstown’s Ben Sevey and Eric Troob.

Together they formed South Kingstown’s second doubles team, and when South Kingstown’s string of 10 consecutive state team titles was on the line, it was Sevey and Troob who delivered the deciding point in the Rebels’ 4-3 victory.

In the game of tennis, doubles players usually are not the feature attraction. Even Sevey admitted he “never thought it would come down to that,” after he and Troob came back from a 3-0 deficit in the third set and eventually captured the point that broke a 3-3 tie.

Then there was Samantha Morrell, the North Kingstown High senior who could have played from the women’s tees during the co-ed Interscholastic League golf season. But Morrell refused to take the advantage and teed it up with the guys from the white tees in regular-season matches and the co-ed statetournament.

During the regular season, only 13 of the approximately 500 boys who played RIIL golf posted a better stroke average than Morrell. In state co-ed tourney, not only did she make the cut for final round of the 36-hole event, she finished in a tie for 10th and was one of only nine players hitting from the white tees who shot in the 70s both days.

The only time she did play from the women’s tees all season was at the girls state tournament, last week, and she won her third straight title.

And while Springer, Burke, Sevey, Troob and Morrell may have garnered the most attention with their performances, they were only a few of the hundreds of teenagers who helped make this spring memorable.

There was Barrington’s Ed Hjerpe winning the co-ed golf title by matching the best round of the tournament on the final day; South Kingstown’s Candace Hazard, Hope’s Jasmine Marrow, Coventry’s Eryn Wheeler and La Salle’s Emily Barrett each winning two individual titles at the girls track state meet; and the Coventry girls softball players giving their school its first fast-pitch softball title.

It may not have been a spring of great weather, but it a spring filled with great memories for hundreds, probably even thousands, of Rhode Island high school student-athletes. Some involved championship celebrations, while others were about achievements that went above and beyond what had been expected of the athletes or their teams, but they were all special.

Now the 2009 spring high school sports season, at least here in Rhode Island, has come down to two or three days of baseball at McCoy Stadium.

The best-of-three Division II title series between Mount St. Charles and Prout begins Wednesday at 3 p.m., and the double-elimination Division I tournament continues that night with South Kingstown and North Kingstown meeting in a losers’ bracket game at 6 o’clock. The winner of the South Kingstown-North Kingstown game will play undefeated Hendricken on Thursday night. Depending on what happens Wednesday and Thursday in the two series, there could winner-take-all games on Thursday.

It would be nice if Mother Nature cooperated with warm, baseball-friendly weather, but regardless, the state’s high school athletes have proved that nothing stops them from delivering memorable performances.

jgillool@projo.com