College Prep Yale Showcase Tour 2011 - Day 3

Benny Lin

Founder & Academy Director

College Prep Yale Showcase Tour 2011 - Day 3

Today has been our longest and most tiring day so far. It was a 20-hour day for all of us.

We got up around 630am again this morning and I took the kids for running and fitness session at 7am. The kids had a good work out as I increased both the volume and intensity of the work out. The kids also ran with faster today which was a good surprise. Some of the kids have sore legs muscles when they got up this morning but that’s a good sign that their muscles are getting stronger. I will keep giving the kids relatively intensive fitness sessions until 2 days before the showcase.

After our morning work out we headed to New York City to visit New York University and Columbia University. It was quite a long drive from where we stayed in New Jersey and the traffic in NYC was horrible. At NYU we met coach Donald who gave us a lot of information about NYU tennis program. We also met with Denise from student-athlete compliance and admission office. Both coach Donald and Denise gave us a lot of invaluable information. As we all know NYU has one of the best business schools in the world. Lai Ting Yee will be going to NYU this coming Aug to start his college life.

During lunch time, I took the kids to Joe’s pizza – known for its celebrity clients. New Yorkers said Joe’s pizza is the best pizza in NYC. I thought Joe’s pizza was delicious, but I had better :-D

Columbia University was out next stop. One of the members of the Ivy League, Columbia I must say boosts a very impressive campus set up inside New York City. One of my former students, Kevin Kung, was recently graduated from Columbia and now working for Morgan Stanley in New York City. Our team was greeted by coach Howard. Coach Howard is one of those people that you will admire. He graduated from Columbia, played for Columbia and pro tennis, worked for Merryl Lynch for 12 years and travelled the world. Obviously coach Howard has had a lot of experience in life and his life experience could be a great help for his players on and off the court.

What really caught my attention this year although I had heard this in the past was how coaches from Seton Hall, NYU, Princeton and Columbia emphasized how big companies and corporations are now recruiting student-athletes first. This is mostly because student-athletes who graduated while representing their school are most likely more discipline, motivated and much better in time management – very important life skills that you don’t learn at class room. Kids learn those important life skills on the court while fighting for every and each point.

We had a great tour at NYU and Columbia. Our tour at Columbia was definitely better because Justin’s mother – Lisa – was an alumni from Barnard College. She forced us to tour Columbia campus :-D Just kidding Lisa. We had a great tour.

After Columbia, since we are in NYC, I took the kids to Times Square to have dinner before we drove for 5 hours to Boston (again traffic was horrible).

Tomorrow we are meeting MIT coaches and hopefully we get to hit some balls. I will not wake the kids up early in the morning as we arrived close to 1am. We will continue our fitness program in the afternoon tomorrow.

I have added pictures to Yale Showcase 2011 Album – please visit HKITA facebook page.