There was travel and travails. There was tribulation and triumph. There was transition and transformation. And there was the reminder that the suggestion that nothing lasts forever is transcendent trash. Because the memories do.

Indeed, the boys of East Lyme will treasure the summer of their lives, the one that ran from June into August, the run of baseball that finished an eyelash from the Little League World Series. And perhaps even when they return to school in a few weeks, moving through the hallways seemingly indistinguishable from their peers, their feel-good story and their celebrity will prevail and endure.

“After a tough loss like that,” manager Lorenzo Biscotto was saying Tuesday, nearly a week removed from a one-run loss to Staten Island, N.Y. in the losers’ bracket final of the Little League Metro Regional, “it stings. As a manager, you think about what you could have done differently.

“But,” he said, “over the last several days, you start looking back and think ‘wow, we did some good stuff.’ We really appreciate what the kids did and are excited for what they experienced.”

What did they experience? Trips to West Hartford, Shelton and Bristol. Traffic. Makeshift lunches and dinners. Friendships. Dingers. Zingers. No-hitters. Mercies. Sac flies. Emotional highs. Laughs with the guys. A second straight Connecticut state championship. ESPN. An extended period away from home in the dormitories at the Giamatti Center in Bristol. Life education only sports can deliver.

“I told the kids after the (Staten Island) game that I’ve been around pro baseball for 25 years,” assistant coach and Philadelphia Phillies scout Todd Donovan said, “and I’ve never been part of anything else that was so much fun and so rewarding.”

They were East Lyme’s kids, but then they were everyone else’s, too. Maybe it’s the whole Little League thing, that despite its corporate leanings, there’s still a sense of innocence about it that fuels the bandwagon. Put it this way: When the Waterfords start rooting for the East Lymes, you’ve got a story.

And the children shall lead them.

“The night of the Staten Island game, all three of our event rooms were full,” said Mike Buscetto, owner of Filomena’s in Waterford, a site of many Waterford sports celebrations over the years. “We had live music in one room, a party of Waterford people in the other room and a party of East Lyme people in the other. Soon, all of us converged to the lounge on the big screens to cheer on the East Lyme kids. This team brought everybody together.”

The team: Alex Biscotto, Blake Gianakos, Brayden Santos, Jonathan Menchaca, Kashton Kaczor, Brady Donovan, Elliot Regan, Blake Morrison, Owen Ament, Rocco Russo, Alexander Mitchell and Ben Lubeski.

“I think back to the beginning in January and February when we picked the team,” Lorenzo Biscotto said. “I thought we had all the pieces. Then it was a case of making sure we surrounded the kids with the right people. (Coaches) Zack Ament, Todd Donovan, Jamie Morrison and Jared Feist are second to none.”

It should be noted that despite East Lyme winning the state title in 2023, a repeat was hardly a layup. Among the reasons: East Lyme is a modestly sized town of around 20,000. Its opponent in the state championship series: Stamford, a city of 136,000. The kids felt it again in the regionals, where Little League has decided Connecticut belongs in the “Metro” and not “New England” region, forcing East Lyme to play teams from New York and northern New Jersey.

And yet nobody in and around the traveling party offers any excuses. What did they do on their summer vacation? They lived, laughed and learned in ways the classroom can’t teach. They showed us that there’s still commonality despite our growing division. They made some history, too.

“I think the kids are going to be heroes,” Donovan said. “As a parent and a coach, the fact that we were able to bring the region together is something you don’t usually see. The kids should be really proud of themselves for that.”

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro