Cheeks flushed, chest heaving, Zander Ainge spoke three words.
“I can’t breathe,” the Westfield player said, the words loud, clear. He spoke for everyone. For the enraptured parents. For the tensed watching players. For the coaches and the athletic directors and even, probably, for the grass and the sticks and the leaves.
There Ainge stood, on the third singles court, roars washing over him, having just saved a match point. For the second time. But not just an ordinary match point. A match point to decide this North 2, Group 4 sectional final between No. 1 seed Westfield and No. 2 seed Ridge.
Ridge’s Elijah Glaze eventually defeated Ainge, 6-4, 6-7 (3), 6-3, clinching a 3-2 Ridge victory and delivering the Red Devils their first sectional title since 2011.
But the pivotal, jaw-dropping, inspiring, intense, absurd, simply ridiculous third singles match between Glaze and Ainge garnished the day with wonder.
“An amazing match,” said Chad Griffiths, the Ridge head coach, “one for the ages.”
“Unbelievable,” one onlooker said, again and again and again.
It lasted 3 hours 45 minutes, a marathon match, an epic. The other matches seemed like mere sideshows, minor attractions. They wrapped up fairly quickly.
Ridge, as expected, seized first singles, Archit Yemula defeating Ben Duan, 6-1, 6-2. Ridge, as expected, seized second singles, Ronald Gualario defeating Tristan Wroe, 6-1, 6-3.
Westfield, as expected, seized first doubles, Eshaan Khera and Cole Hornbeck winning, 6-1, 6-2. Westfield, as expected, seized second doubles, Deven Patel and Colin Cimei winning, 6-3, 6-1.
By 4:29 p.m., after a scheduled start time of 3 p.m., those four matches had concluded. Ainge and Glaze finished at 6:45 p.m.
Everyone at Tamaques Park on Monday seemed to understand the situation. It would come down to third singles. Both coaches acknowledged it. The players all knew it. So all the chatter encircling the courts concerned the crucial match, and watching players clung to the fence behind the court, and roars emanated after big points.
Heads bowed, a pair of Westfield players turned their backs to the court for one imperative game, succumbing to the unbearable tension, relying on a watching teammate to relay to them the score. Other players clung to the fence at points, faces masks, eyes their only moving body part.
The tension hung thicker on the Westfield side. Glaze had won the first set, then embarked on a fierce campaign in the second. The freshman surged ahead, up two breaks on Ainge at 4-1. Ainge broke Glaze’s serve to draw closer. But Glaze broke right back.
So it was 5-2, the specter of defeat solidifying.
Glaze about to serve for the match. A season on the ropes. A comeback seemed improbable.
“I absolutely thought it was possible,” said George Kapner, Westfield’s head coach. “I actually said to Matt Vahrley, the assistant coach, there are two possibilities here. Either the season’s over, or a great story’s about to hatch.”
Kapner was wrong. There existed a third possibility. A combination of the two.
The season ended. A great story also hatched.
“I honestly just went for it,” Ainge said. “I don’t know. I just stayed in it. I was just really in the zone from 5-2 down. I just started smiling. It’s weird.”
Ainge rescued shot after shot after shot. He slid left, slid right, lunged to return Glaze’s powerful forehands. A hush settled as Glaze blasted forehand after forehand into the corners, only for Ainge, impossibly, to throw a racket in the way.
Ainge broke Glaze to remain in the match. But then, on Ainge’s serve, Glaze’s first match point arrived.
The Ridge players congregated at the fence door, preparing to storm the court in victory. Their coach waved them back. A smart move. No storming, not yet.
Ainge saved the match point. Then smacked a forehand winner into the corner on the ensuing point. Then won the game on the next point, a Glaze shot striking the net.
High school tennis etiquette dictates no cheering after mistakes yield points. High school tennis etiquette deserves defenestration after this match.
Ainge turned slowly to his roaring teammates and smiled.
“He just never gave up,” Griffiths said, “which is inspiring.”
The match featured a fascinating homogeneity of styles, Ainge playing against “a carbon copy of himself,” Kapner said. “The two of them just kept the ball in play for four hours.”
They stood there, it sometimes seemed like, forever. Feet shuffling behind the baseline, cheeks puffing in exertion, slugging it out. Ainge saved that second match point. Then he proceeded to force the match back on serve, at 5-5.
Nope, said Glaze. He broke Ainge, quickly, nonchalantly. So, again, here it went. Glaze serving for the match. An “amazing” player, in Ainge’s words, poised to deliver his team a long-awaited sectional title.
Not yet.
An Ainge forehand floated over Glaze’s stretching arm and landed in. Tiebreak.
Ainge quickly dispelled any drama in the tiebreak, winning it easily. The stolid Glaze, for the first time all afternoon, vented his frustration on a loose ball late in the tiebreak.
“I was really angry after that,” Glaze said. “Actually, after I lost the set, I was pretty mad.”
Glaze sat cross-legged on the court during the break, surrounded by bottles of water and Gatorade, alongside Griffiths.
“It’s a reset,” Griffiths said he told Glaze. “It’s one set now.”
The third set proved something of an anticlimax.
Ainge played riveting defense, but Glaze, solid as ever, mixed up his shots, his power never wavering.
“He has a weaker backhand, so I was attacking that more,” Glaze said. “Also, I was trying to move him around.” Griffiths said they focused on being unpredictable.
There’s also this: Glaze “literally doesn’t make mistakes,” Kapner said.
Ainge attempted to force Glaze off the baseline all day, deploying successive drop shots and passing shots, and the weeks of practice on that skill made Ainge “very effective at it,” Kapner said.
“I thought I did basically everything right,” Ainge said. “I hit my drop shots well. He just responded.”
More than an hour separated Glaze’s third match point from his first two. But on it, Ainge finally surrendered. An Ainge forehand flashed into the net, prompting the giddy Ridge players to perform the court storming Ainge denied them earlier. They streamed onto the court and mobbed Glaze.
“It felt pretty good,” Glaze said, laughing a bit. “It felt pretty good.”
Ainge cried a little, tears not of sorrow, but of happiness, a release from the grueling, emotional on-court marathon.
“He gave everything he had,” said Westfield athletic director Sandy Mamary.
“I couldn’t be prouder of him,” Kapner said.
The Ridge win, though, spoiled another possibly momentous occasion: Kapner’s 700th win. He would have been the first Westfield coach to reach that milestone. Having to wait another year didn’t bother him.
“It’s just a number,” he said. “Honest to God, it’s just a number.”
And so the Westfield players filtered into their cars, and the Ridge players climbed into their bus, and, after a gripping afternoon, the grass and the sticks and the leaves could breathe again.
1 comment
Thank you for writing such a beautiful and all inspiring piece— Zander Ainge is my nephew and I have only been able to watch a few matches.
My sister and brother in law in the stands must have been going nuts.
Thank you for sharing and capturing this pivotal moment.
Jean Boranian – Aunt Gigi