When people say that history repeats itself, they aren’t usually referring to high school tennis.

But in a match that lasted just under an hour and a half last Saturday afternoon, the Vineyard boys successfully defended their Massachusetts division three state championship title with a 4-1 win against Bromfield.

The Vineyarders brought home the first state title in the history of the tennis program last year, and sealed their legacy at the high school with Saturday’s victory. They finish the season with a 21-1 record; in the last two seasons, they have lost only one match, to division one Barnstable.

The team swept playoff opponents Seekonk and Dover-Sherborn and blanked Westport to win the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletics Association division three south section for the second year in a row. On Wednesday this week they defeated Weston 4-1 in the state semifinals to advance to the championship game, played on the courts of Clark University in Worcester.

Bromfield was the top seed in the Central division.

“It just felt like another match until the end,” senior doubles player Justin Smith said afterwards.

Smith and second doubles partner Ryan Sawyer earned the first win of the day, rolling to a 6-2, 6-1 win over opponents Charlie Friedrich and Dan Poustovalou. The Vineyard seniors have been playing together since they were sophomores.

“We’ve just gotten more used to each other’s ability’s,” Sawyer said. “We’ve both improved a lot.”

At second doubles, senior Jackson McBride and junior Patrick McCarthy secured a quick 6-0 first set against Nick Hildreth and Lucas Hickok. But as McBride described afterwards, they “took the foot off the pedal” in the second. After leading early on, the Vineyard pair fell behind 4-3, took a 5-4 lead, and evened the set at 5-5 before storming to take the set 7-5.

“It tells you about the maturity of the players and their mental state, that they can respond to adversity, a little bit of adversity, and still win,” Vineyard coach Ned Fennessy said. “It’s to their credit, it’s not anything that I did.”

Coach Fennessy retires this season after 23 years with the program.

“I thought that top-to-bottom Martha’s Vineyard was very talented,” Bromfield head coach Ryan Venditti said after the match. “We battled in every single match; everyone played well and played hard.”

“It was a good season, a good match,” McBride said. “They were better than I thought they would be.”

At first singles, senior Natty Schneider took the lone Vineyard loss of the day, turning in a strong second set but falling 6-1, 6-4, to Drew Banker.

Senior co-captain Kent Leonard, playing at second singles, clinched the match for the Vineyard with a 6-3, 6-3 win over Jayme Davis ten minutes after McBride and McCarthy had locked up their match.

Leonard has not lost a match in team play this season. Fellow captain Justice Yennie, who turned in the longest match of the day at third singles with a 6-3, 7-5 win over Kevin Sun, has lost only one match in the past three years on the team.

“The thing that stands out [to me] is the consistency of play across the seven starters,” Coach Fennessy said. “Over the course of the season, they’ve been very consistent, very focused for the most part — although at the end of the season here a little senioritis crept in.” Six of the seven starters are seniors; graduation was last weekend.

Coach Fennessy said the grade point average for the entire team was 3.28, another repeat performance from the Vineyarders, who had the same cumulative GPA last year. “So from an athletic standpoint and academic standpoint they’re champions,” he said.

Both the coach and the players admitted it was hard to stay focused as the season drew to a close and graduation came and went.

Practices often became “semi-practices,” Coach Fennessy said.

“But that didn’t worry me too much, because I knew when it came time that they would stand up. And they have.”

View a photo slideshow from the tournament.