Howard Bi could have easily been excused for hunkering down and going through the motions after transferring to St. Ed’s for his senior year in high school, but with this brilliant and highly engaging young man, there was absolutely no chance of that happening.
“The transition to St. Edward’s at the beginning was very hard,” Bi said. “I wasn’t really excited about changing schools in my senior year. I grew up in Montgomery, NJ, for basically my entire life since I was 5. When I came here in my senior year it was very different. Montgomery was a huge public school and I came to a school with 65 kids per grade. The entire high school was half of one grade at Montgomery.”
The move to a new state, let alone to a new school as a senior, could knock many young teens for a loop. Not Howard Bi. He quickly overcame a bout with social stage fright to become one of the most distinguished students – and athletes – to ever set foot on St. Ed’s campus for only one year.
While there proved to be many routes available for Bi to integrate himself into campus life, none was more important than his favorite sport, tennis. The fact that it is a spring sport did not delay the assimilation process as soon as he enrolled last fall.
“I was already planning to join the tennis team, but before that I actually met some of the guys I was going to be playing with,” Bi said. “They were very interesting people. Those guys and Coach Alet (Filmater) were the ones that made me feel comfortable being on the team. I really loved it.
“Having my brother (Jeffrey) on the team took a little bit of the pressure off me. He knew a lot of the guys from the year before and introduced me to them. He certainly helped the transition.”
It wasn’t as if a novice was coming aboard looking for something to do in his free time. He was captain of the Montgomery varsity tennis team in 2014. He soared to No. 5 in the USTA singles rankings for the state of New Jersey. His Montgomery teams were two-time conference and sectional champions, and made it to the state semifinals once.
Coach Filmater took notice and gave Bi a prominent position on the tennis team to start the season.
“I was given the opportunity to play No. 1 singles for a while and I got to play some very good players from the other schools,” Bi, a southpaw, told us. “It was a very good experience for me. Although we really didn’t make it that far in the regional competition, I feel that as a team we really connected with each other.
“I also played doubles with a lot of different guys and we established a good team bond. And although we didn’t win all that much, getting to know these guys was a much better thing in the long run.”
Filmater adjusted her lineup frequently based on past performance, player availability and matchup strategy. Wherever Bi was placed he clearly thrived. Last week he capped off a fine season by being named to the All-Area Honorable Mention Team as a No. 3 singles player.
Tennis played a major role in bringing Bi and his family to Florida, albeit in stages. His parents are from China but Howard was born in Chicago while his father went to business school at the University of Chicago. Jeffrey was born in New Zealand and the youngest sibling, Emily, was born in New Jersey when the family finally settled there.
All three kids took up tennis at an early stage and Emily went to the head of the class. She was so good that her mother moved down here with her and Jeffrey when the family decided that a Florida tennis academy was the best place to develop her considerable skills. One year later Howard and his father reunited with them in the Sunshine State.
Tennis was the vehicle that brought Howard to Florida and St. Ed’s, but it will be academic prowess that takes him back to his early roots in Chicago. He wound up being the co-valedictorian of his graduating class and decided to retrace his father’s footsteps back to the U of Chicago.
Attending a Model UN Conference at the U of Chicago clinched the deal over Harvard and Princeton. His senior year was jam-packed with a variety of extracurricular group activities. The consensus among his instructors and counselors was unanimous. In his short time as a Pirate, Bi established a reputation as an excellent thinker, eloquent class contributor, strong writer and outstanding public speaker.
However, one thing that stumped him temporality was an essay prompt that was part of the admissions process at the U of Chicago. He blanked out on “What’s so odd about odd numbers?” but was finally able to regain his composure and selected “Were pH an expression of personality, what would your pH be, and why?”
All Bi would say about his lengthy essay in response to that brain teaser was: “It ended up working out because I got in. My parents are both very happy. My dad really wanted me to go there.”
