Weymuller First-Round Qualifying Update: Aitken Rallies Late To Out-Last Teran 
by Rob Dinerman

Dateline October 1st --- Trailing throughout most of the match and much of the fifth game against a more experienced opponent known for grinding her way to victory in exactly this type of match scenario, Lisa Aitken came up with her best squash right in the final stretch when it was needed most to defeat Samantha Teran 8-11 11-8 8-11 11-5 11-8 Tuesday evening at the Heights Casino Club in Brooklyn to launch the 2013 Carol Weymuller Cup in memorable fashion. The best players in the world --- including World Open champion Nicol David, British Open champion Laura Massaro, who won the Weymuller a year ago, and two-time Weymuller winner Jenny Duncalf -- are competing in the tournament this year, but for sheer determination and competitive ardor, even they will be hard-pressed to surpass what Teran and Aitken conjured up in this, the first qualifying match of the night.

   Teran, one of a number of this year's pool of Weymuller contestants who had made this annual journey to Brooklyn Heights for more than a decade, forced the action early on, maintaining an edge both on the scoreboard and in her control of the action that fully earned her the opening game, but in the second the left-handed Aitken avoided the errors, some of them forced, that had cost her dearly in the first game and pounded her way through the second. However, she clearly lost her focus between the ending of that game and the outset of the third, which began on a Teran serve-return straight-drop winner, the first of four consecutive points that swiftly landed in the Mexican's column. After scoring her first point on a drop-shot winner, Aitken promptly hit her ensuing serve out of court and later hit a bad serve-return tin that gave Teran a 10-6 lead and a lock on that game.

   Though a bit rattled-looking at that juncture, Aitken regained her composure in the fourth, which she ran out from 7-5 as Teran appeared to let the last few points of that game go to conserve herself for the fifth. From 4-all to 8-all, neither player had a lead of more than one point as the two fought fiercely through a series of grueling, tortuously-paced and evenly-divided points until, with both understandably visibly fatigued players three points from victory, they had battled each other of such even terms that no one watching could have any plausible conviction as to who would prevail.

   It is the type of match around the winning of which the battle-scarred but decorated Teran, a former World Open semifinalist, has built a very praiseworthy career. But this time it was Aitken, who perhaps evinced just the barest edge in athleticism and resolve during the final sprint to the tape, who came away with each of the next three points -- the key being the middle one, which she first extended with a diving front-right get and then ended with a touch drop-shot to get to 10-8, a huge swing from 9-all --- then let out a triumphant yell when her last drive eluded Teran's desperate grasp to seal Aitken's gritty, hard-won and thoroughly deserved triumph and get the Weymuller launched in a truly dramatic manner.