Ryan Westmoreland, who probably has thrown his last pitch as a high school player, lets fly against Barrington earlier this season. He is being heavily scouted.

The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski

There are the banners that hang on the gymnasium wall for decades. There are the jackets that declare the wearer was a member of a state championship team, and there are stories that will be forever told about that championship season.

A state championship is something that every high school athlete covets.

But as exciting as championship celebrations can be, high school sports always should be more about a teenager’s future than a state championship banner.

That’s why Portsmouth’s Ryan Westmoreland probably will never pitch in another high school baseball game.

If you have been paying attention to what’s happening on the Rhode Island sports scene this spring, you know about Westmoreland.

He’s a 6-foot-2, 195-pound Portsmouth High senior three-sport star, but it’s his baseball talent that has put him in the spotlight this spring.

He’s a pitcher and an outfielder. Last fall, he signed a National Letter of Intent with Vanderbilt University, but this spring the professional baseball scouts started making regular trips to Portsmouth’s games. Six or seven scouts at Portsmouth games became a usual occurrence. One day in late April, Boston Red Sox vice president of player personnel Ben Cherington came to a game, and after the contest asked Westmoreland if he would take some batting practice using a wood bat.

The scouts came with radar guns and stopwatches. They clocked his pitching and his base running, and both were impressive. The word is the pro scouts are looking at him more as an everyday player because of his foot speed and bat speed. He throws right, but bats left and can go from home plate to first base in four seconds flat.

But there’s no question that he also can pitch. He consistently throws fastballs in the high 80s to low 90s with pinpoint accuracy. In six mound appearances (a total of 40 innings) in the first six weeks of the season, he registered 89 strikeouts and walked only 9. He won every game he started. He pitched one perfect game and a couple of one-hitters. He gave up only seven hits and two earned runs in those 40 innings.

You can’t blame the people of Portsmouth for thinking that with Westmoreland leading the way, this was going to be the year the school won its first Division I baseball championship. Portsmouth won 17 of 18 Interscholastic League Division I games this season, the best record among the state’s 28 Division I teams.

There’s never a sure thing in high school sports, but this spring a Portsmouth victory when Westmoreland was on the mound was a fairly safe bet.

Then, two weeks ago, Westmoreland came to practice one day and said his right (pitching) elbow was a little sore. Portsmouth coach Dave Ulmschneider didn’t take any chances. Within a day, Westmoreland was being examined by a doctor who said it would be a good idea to have an MRI taken. The MRI showed there was no structural damage, just a mild strain of the medial collateral ligament. The prescription was rest. Hitting was OK, but no throwing for two weeks.

So for the final two weeks of the regular season and the first playoff game last week, Westmoreland was just a designated hitter. Finally, last Friday, Westmoreland was given the medical go-ahead to do some throwing.

But Ulmschneider and his coaching staff had made a decision. They decided that even if the doctor says the elbow is back to 100 percent, even when Westmoreland says he wants the ball, they will not put their ace back on the mound this season. They feel it’s just too much of a gamble with Westmoreland’s future to have him throwing 70 or 80 pitches in late May in New England.

So last Friday, when Portsmouth played La Salle in the winners’-bracket final of their regional double-elimination tourney, a game La Salle won, 4-3, Westmoreland was playing first base.

He was not on the mound Sunday when Portsmouth stayed alive in the tourney with a losers’-bracket victory over East Providence, and he will not be on the mound tonight when Portsmouth meets undefeated La Salle again. Even if Portsmouth manages to win the regional tournament by beating La Salle twice over the next two days, Ulmschneider has no plans to pitch Westmoreland in the four-team double-elimination championship series next week.

“Ryan is working extremely hard to get 100 percent healthy and is itching to get back on the mound, but (we) can’t, in good conscience, allow him to do so,” said Ulmschneider. “With all that he has to look forward to it would be irresponsible of us to put him there.”

Of course, the Portsmouth baseball team isn’t conceding its chance of winning the school’s coveted first state crown just because Westmoreland will not be pitching. With Westmoreland and fellow first-team All-Stater John Pedrotty hitting back-to-back in the lineup, the Patriots probably have the best one-two punch in the state. They both are hitting over .500 and have combined for 6 home runs and 59 RBI. Pedrotty also is a good pitcher, plus senior pitcher Tim Flight is undefeated this season, including a one-hit shutout in Portsmouth’s first playoff game last week.

“We feel confident what we are still serious contenders to win the state baseball championship,” Ulmschneider wrote in an e-mail.

But to get to next week’s title series, the Patriots must get past La Salle in the current regional tournament, and right now the Rams are playing good, exciting baseball. They posted a 5-4 victory over Cranston East in the second round of the playoffs last week with a two-out, three-run homer in the bottom of the seventh inning. They then broke a 3-3 tie with Portsmouth with a run in the top of the seventh on Friday.

Portsmouth fans certainly would love to see Westmoreland pitching against the Rams, but it’s not going to happen.

“A state championship would be a tremendous achievement, but it does not outweigh our obligation to always do what is in the best interest of the players in our charge,” said Ulmschneider.

It’s about futures, not championship banners.

jgillool@projo.com