The regional high school boys’ tennis team fought valiantly on Wednesday in the second round of the Division 3 state tournament against number three seed Dover-Sherborn, but in the end fell to the defending South Sectional champions 4-1.

Despite the loss the Vineyard boys had a remarkable season, going 15-5 overall and advancing to the semifinals of the state tournament for the first time. Dover-Sherborn improved to 16-1 with the win.

The Vineyard certainly did not go quietly, winning one match against Dover-Sherborn while extending another to a lengthy third set. Number one singles player Andrew McHugh lost a hard-fought match to Andy Dougherty, (6-4, 6-4), but it was a match that easily could have gone the other way. McHugh was behind 1-4 in the second set, then made a run to square things at 4-4.

But Dougherty rose to the challenge and won the next two games for the match.

Meanwhile, the Vineyard’s number two singles player, Reid Yennie, dropped his match to Nate Saletan (6-1, 6-2) and number three singles player Nik Wojtkielo lost to Jon Kuromiya (6-2, 6-3).

In doubles, the Vineyard’s number one team of Win Grimm and Dylan Hutchinson were up 5-3 in the third set, but the Dover-Sherborn team of Nat Storer and Peter Topahjasvin made a run of four games, winning set and match.

The sole bright spot for the Vineyard was the number two pairing of Zach Rabin and Grant McCarthy, who after splitting sets, won their super tiebreaker 10-6 to win the third set.

Coach Ned Fennessy had high praise for his team.

“This is a team with a lot of fight. We had to overcome challenges all season long, we didn’t even have our whole team together for many matches, but we still managed to win consistently . . . this is a great bunch of kids, they should be proud of what they did this season,” he said.