The HKIS graduate will be the first student-athlete from the territory to play Ivy League tennis since former Yale women's team captain, Jackie Fu, graduated in 2000. In addition, Kevin ties former HK Davis Cupper, Rolf Harrison (Princeton), as the only two HK men to ply their trade in the Ivy League, as the 17-year-old is one of two freshman recruits to join the Lions.

Bid Goswami, who celebrated his 25th year as head coach of the Columbia men's team, was voted Wilson/ITA Regional Coach of the Year for leading the Lions to a share of the Ivy League title last season.

However, Kevin is a full-time student at HKIS and over the past four seasons had averaged less than six ITF tournaments a year. In fact, his course load was extra tough, which included honors level and AP college level classes. After successfully maintaining a GPA of 3.5 or above for three out of the four years of highschool, he has earned himself a High Honor Student award in addition to being named HKIS Senior Athlete of the Year, an accolade based on both academics and athletics.

Yet he is also very astute in analyzing the situation he's facing. He realizes regular school restricts his time spent playing tournaments on the junior circuit, thus there is actually more pressure on him to deliver every time he steps out on court for he does not have the luxury of next week's tournament. His frequency of participation averages out to something like one tournament every 2- 3 months. With that in mind, a junior world ranking of 274 cannot possibly be construed as shabby at all.

While most juniors find tennis and online schooling a tough enough challenge, let alone formal schooling, he still managed to haul his ranking from an initial 1200 to a career-high No. 274 in the world this year. A High Honor Student's full course load, apparently, was not much of an obstacle for Kevin, as he managed to win three doubles titles in his career, as well as reaching the finals of the 2006 HK ITF Grade 5 Tournament.

But that's not all.

Kevin is in a band called Polar Shift. He is the bassist, and writes the music as well as the lyrics. The song "Hope" from their self-entitled album Polar Shift appeared in a local motion picture, Wonder Woman, which starred Gigi Leung.

"We've played at a variety of locations - a teenage underground warehouse club, a public performance by the pier outside the performing arts center at TST (roughly 200 people), a charity fashion show (roughly 600-800 people), an anniversary function (1000 people), and school functions (roughly 200 people)," explained Kevin.

Yet things were a little different back when he was 12 when he tore the rotator cuff in his playing shoulder, needed arthroscopic surgery, and was off for six months. The ensuing rehabilitation consisted of repetitions after repetitions of basic weights and routines. At one point, he even thought about quitting tennis because he was losing to players he had soundly beaten prior to his injury.

As it turned out, the time off was spent productively to pursue other interests, and he was beginning to master the art of time management under his parent's tutelage. He also persisted and got motivated enough to become the No. 1 player in the B16U age group in Hong Kong. He was to back that up by capturing the B18U title at the HK National Jr Championships in 2006 and then consecutive CRC Open School Boys' titles from 2005-06 before finally becoming the B18U number one.

When thrown the proposition of whether tennis was the decisive factor that got him accepted to Columbia if two applicants had the same set of everything else, he said: "Definitely, you can say that a person with the same grades and the same essays has a lesser chance than me because I have tennis and he doesn't.

He went on, "But I think letting that proposition stand alone isn't entirely accurate. If I had gotten to put all my tennis time into my studies, I would have pursued other interests such as music or other sports that might have put me in the collegiate level. Having said that, tennis is a sport with a lot of global depth. Sports like basketball, soccer or swimming are only dominated by a few countries, so there is an advantage for tennis players in terms of athletic recruitment."

"A common misconception is that GPAs and SATs are the determining factor. Obviously, those two are very important. In fact, they are a given. But there are so many students with stellar scores who get rejected. There are no two students that got into college the same way. The student population for Columbia is 4000...and the population for Yale is 8000. There you go...12,000 different ways of getting into college. Nobody got in exactly the same way," was his final analysis on admissions.

According to a New York Times article¹ in April, competition for places in elite institutions such as the Ivy League was the toughest in recent memory. Apparently, Harvard had turned down over a thousand applicants with perfect SAT scores (1600), while those with 4.0 highschool GPAs were also rejected by other Ivy League schools numbering in the thousands. Based purely on number of applicants versus number of acceptances, the article listed Columbia (8.9%) as the toughest school to get into in the US, followed by Harvard (9%), while Stanford's admit rate stood at 10.3%.

Academics aside, Kevin will join a Columbia team that tied Univ. of Pennsylvania as the co-Ivy League champions after the two rivals finished with identical 6-1 records last season. Columbia, however, beat Penn again in a subsequent playoff to earn the right to represent the Ivy Group at the NCAA Championships.

Last season, Jonathan Wong (Columbia) completed a perfect 7-0 freshman season and won the Ivy League Rookie of the Year Award. He also joined teammate Mark Clemente among the All-Ivy League Honorees with Second Team mentions.

The eight teams that make up the Ivy Group are Columbia, Univ. of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown, Cornell, and Dartmouth College.

"My ability to manage my time and persevere is a strength. To me, the world's greatest satisfaction is to work extremely hard at something and finally achieve it. Plus, I don’t enjoy venturing half way into things, so if I decide to work at something, I do the best I could possibly do. My parents were also very motivating," elaborated Kevin.

His game style resembles an all-court game, as he is equally adept at staying back or venturing to the forecourt when the opportunities present themselves. He also possesses a powerful lefty serve, which is another weapon he can rely on during crunch time.

When asked if he thought his game style resembled his real life persona, he said, "I possess an all-court game, and I like to go-for-broke...a lot...sometimes too often. But I don't agree with the hypothesis. My hard-hitting and often go for broke style doesn't resemble my character. Off the court, I can be very reserved."

"This year my senior year I trained roughly 8-12 hours a week and mostly with Andrew Ilie. He did teach me a lot - simplified my technique and made small incremental changes to my serve. During my 9-11th grade years, it was 4:00-7:20pm training after school, and then 3-4 hours of homework afterwards. The first coach that taught me all the basics was Marcos Manqueros. He was very good at teaching form and the fundamentals of the game," says Kevin.

He sites the win against men's qualies No. 1 seed Chang Kai-Lung, who was ranked at a career-high No. 869 at the Thailand F5 last year as one of his biggest wins. Yet the significance of his win against David Anderson, currently ranked 72nd nationally and the 18U No. 1 from the New England section, cannot be more noteworthy.

At the Donovan Showcase at Yale last year – an event for college coaches to scout potential recruits and an arena for top prospects to display their tennis acumen – Kevin trailed David Anderson, 6-4, 4-1, on centre court in the presence of most of the Ivy League coaches. Somehow, he stuck with it long enough until he finally managed to shift up a gear, as he broke his opponent three times to steal the second set, 7-5. Kevin then continued where he left off as he went on to take the deciding set in a super-tiebreak, 10-6.

This come-from-behind win against a visible opponent was especially noteworthy because with the level of schooling that Kevin has to contend with, it constraints the number of ITF tournaments he is able to enter. Given such circumstances, a ranking of 274 would have been highly respectable. Yet it would also have been quite a challenge to prove to the schools how good a tennis player he is if it wasn't for the impressive victory against Anderson on centre court.

David Anderson, incidentally, has signed a Letter of Intent to attend Notre Dame.

Subsequently, a number of schools, the likes of Harvard, Brown, Cornell, and Michigan all showed great interests in Kevin but in the end, he chose Columbia.

As the first college established in New York, Columbia is of course home to the Pulitzer Prize, which, for over a century, has rewarded outstanding achievements in disciplines spanning journalism, literature and music. It is also of no surprise to discover that its Graduate School of Journalism is ranked number one in the nation.

"I chose Columbia because of the city...there are just so many opportunities available. An internship may be just a few blocks down. Plus the fun and excitement you get - artists, musicians and Broadway - are a subway station away. Columbian life style is also very sink or swim, so hopefully it will get me ready to adapt to the fast paced world after college. NYC is also one plane ride away from HK," said Kevin.

The lure of the Big Apple was simply irresistible.

Related Article: Men's Tennis Adds Two Recruits (21 May 2007)

Source:
¹ Dillon, Sam. (2007). "A Great Year for Ivy League Schools, but Not So Good for Applicants to Them", The New York Times, E1, April 4.