FALMOUTH — The high school tennis season opens Tuesday, and longtime Yarmouth girls’ coach Ann Harradon is hoping for rain.

She’s kidding, sort of.

Yarmouth’s opponent is Falmouth High, the seven-time defending state champion riding a 109-match winning streak that dates back to 2008. It’s the longest current streak of any team in Maine high school sports.

“Obviously, no one’s going to beat them,” Harradon said. “Falmouth is going to roll over everybody and then they’ll roll over everybody in the playoffs. They would probably beat a lot of the boys’ teams.”

Falmouth tennis is the latest example of a Maine high school sport dynasty, but the girls still have years to go before reaching the Pine State pinnacle of 14 consecutive state titles. That belongs to the Old Town boys’ swim team, which dominated Class B from 1985 to 1998.

The Mt. Blue girls’ ski team won 11 Class A state titles from 1992 and 2002, as did the St. Dominic boys’ hockey team, from 1947 to 1957. The only other team with a decade of dominance was Sanford High, which won 10 straight wrestling state titles from 1959 to 1968.

Falmouth hasn’t even scaled the tennis summit yet. South Portland (1972-80 in Class A) and Cape Elizabeth (1990-98) each won nine in a row.

Still, the Falmouth girls didn’t even drop a set last season en route to the Class A crown, their first after moving up from Class B.

“I would be shocked if they lost a set to anybody (this season),” Harradon said.

Senior Olivia Leavitt, junior Julia Brogan and junior Caroline Ray return this year at the top three singles positions for Falmouth, which also returns three of the four doubles players who took part in last spring’s state title victory over Brunswick.

“We have a lot of depth,” said Sandy Stone, entering her 13th season as Falmouth’s head coach. “The doubles players would probably play singles at any other school.”

Falmouth’s feeder system includes a middle school program. There are also three country clubs (Woodlands, Falmouth and Portland) in town. Stone isn’t getting kids who need instruction.

“What keeps them sharp is this,” said Stone, gesturing to the sight of Brogan and Ray trading groundstrokes. “This is the best competition they’re going to have in singles, hitting with each other.”

Stone has a new assistant coach this spring, Bill Goodspeed, a 4.5-rated USTA player who, unlike Stone, can rally with Leavitt, the defending singles state champion.

“Probably 90 percent of the varsity plays year-round and takes lessons and continually works on their tennis skills,” said Leavitt, who will continue her career at Brandeis University in the fall. “At the beginning of the season, we’re not going to assume that we have every match in the bag. All you can hope for is to play your best and hope that your hard work pays off.”

Falmouth has 19 girls in the program. Stone works to ensure that some drills and games can be done by everyone, regardless of skill level. There is an expectation of success, and winning never gets old or boring.

“We’ve all played with former members of the Falmouth team like Hallsey Leighton, Analise Kump and Annie Criscione,” Brogan said. “We’ve hit with them so we’ve known their success and we’ve known what they’ve been able to accomplish. When we came into high school, we wanted to do the same thing.”

Andy Strout, who coaches Cape Elizabeth boys’ tennis, knows all about keeping a good thing going. He coached Cape’s boys to a 129-match regular-season winning streak and Cape’s girls to a 96-0 stretch and 142-1 overall record during their nine-year title reign.

“I hate to say it, but a lot of it is about a community that has the affluence and resources to allow kids to play year-round,” he said. “To be successful for so long, you’ve got to have kids who are playing out-of-season. And it’s not cheap.”

Strout also coached Cape Elizabeth’s girls’ soccer program to five straight state championships when club teams were starting to come into vogue. Now every competitive high school team is chock full of kids who play premier league soccer.

Success alone, he said, will not sustain itself. There must be something more.

“If you make any sport fun,” he said, “the kids are going to want to play.”

Both Dave Ploch, the swim coach at Old Town, and Bob Morse, the longtime ski coach at Yarmouth, cited family and community support as being key ingredients to the extended success of their programs. They also said their athletes tended to be excellent students.

As frustrating as it is for Harradon to see her Yarmouth tennis players overmatched on the court, she harbors no ill will toward the Falmouth juggernaut.

“I see some of them playing in the adult tournaments,” she said. “Now, I’ve seen some tennis girls who are not so nice, but this is a nice group of girls.

“I’m just glad we only have to play them once a season.”

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