State tennis champion as a junior.
State runner-up as a senior, playing through a painful wrist injury. Bryan Assi didn’t regret the journey either time. If he had rested that right wrist over the weekend, he wouldn’t have felt the severe pain with every serve, every forehand and backhand. He had to know, can I beat Koji Ho in this championship match?
Ho, a Punahou sophomore, was ready, staving off a second-set surge for a 6-3, 7-5 win over Assi on Saturday morning. Ho spent the half-hour after the match on his back suffering with body cramps. Assi’s wrist was maxed out and in need of rest time, but Hilo’s first state champion since 2004 was at peace. He spent every moment after the match reuniting with friends and competitors from across the state.
Not a trace of bitterness. Ho will never forget the battle.
“Bryan’s quality made me play so much better because I had to. His forehand is just so dangerous, I have to be on defense,” Ho said.
Hilo coach Wayne Yamada considers Assi one of one.
“I knew him when he was 9 or 10. He came through the (junior tennis) system. We could all see the raw talent he had. He had to work on some things. The competitiveness got to him at times. Being that young and wanting to be great drove him to where he is,” Yamada said.
Yamada was a longtime girls tennis coach at Hilo but oversees the boys program as well as of this year.
“When I took this job on and knew he would play this year as a senior, I wanted to know, what can I help him with? But there’s nothing I can do that he doesn’t already know,” Yamada said.
Assi, Yamada notes, is constantly in self-correcting, self-coaching mode.
“He’s saying (to himself), ‘I can’t miss that.’ ‘This is unacceptable.’ I thought maybe I would help him be a better person off the court, but he is already there. His family is so good. They’re the epitome of good parents,” Yamada said.
Assi has much to look forward to. Since the day he joined his older brother, Gil, and mother, Julienne, to practice at Lincoln Park, he has stacked hundreds of thousands of reps. He was 6 when he started playing in 12-under tournaments in Hilo. After more than a decade, he has played in roughly 40 mainland tournaments, accompanied by his father, a Hilo High School teacher.
The exposure and work ethic have paid off. He will play at Yale next season, eight years after Gil began playing at Dartmouth.
It’s the kind of long-shot scenario that doesn’t work in most households, but the Assi family doesn’t compromise its standards. Bryan has a cumulative GPA of 4.15.
“I’m grateful. Sometimes, kids are scared to go far. You need to push them to do better,” said Bryan’s mother, Julienne. “Take AP classes. You have to be ready for college.”
The family was in the midst of a grand adventure, the move of a lifetime. Bryan was born in the U.S., but the Assi family returned to Ivory Coast. When they left Abidjan, a massive city in Ivory Coast, they landed in New York City.
“For me, it’s a lot of fragments of memories. I was pretty sad to leave and go so far,” Bryan said.
That stay turned out to be temporary, just two months in the Big Apple.
“New York was cold,” Hippolyte said.
Hilo, it turns out, had the kind of weather and vibe that reminded him of home.
Julienne Assi loves big cities but trusted her husband on this decision.
“It was my husband who said, ‘Let’s go to New York.’ He wants the best for his kids. I trust him,” she said. “When we moved to Hilo, I wanted to go back the same day. I was used to a big city. We were in Mountain View. It was scary. Night time, you hear the birds. I start crying. I want to go back. I wake up in the morning. He said, ‘Stay here. Try.’ I decided to stay, but it took me long. One week. Two weeks.”
Gil played soccer in Puna for one year but asked his mother about going back to tennis.
“I said, ‘I don’t have any money for tennis,” Julienne said.
Hiring a trainer was not going to happen. They adopted the approach taken by sisters Serena and Venus Williams with their father, Richard. Gil’s mother became his unofficial trainer, even though she knew almost nothing about tennis.
“Gil said, ‘I’ll teach you how to train me.’ We had tennis books. My husband brought a lot of books from the library. We’ll see what we can do,” Julienne recalled.
Bryan Assi was 4 when he first picked up a tennis racquet.
Not a toddler racquet. Not a junior racquet.
At 6, Bryan was using that adult racquet, which was about as big as he was.
“He was using a leftover racquet from his brother. We didn’t have money for another one,” Julienne said.
There were stints with football, soccer and basketball. Every time, he returned to full-time devotion on the tennis court.
“He has always been a good student and tennis player. He’s focused. He keeps practicing and practicing. Working hard. He doesn’t play around,” she said.
All he wanted was to beat Gil on the court. It wasn’t going to happen. Gil was 12. Then a pause with the move to the islands. At 14 Gil resumed tennis. Bryan was 6.
While Gil stacked reps at Lincoln Park, Bryan was Velcro, insisting on tagging along.
“Ooh, he was jumping any way when he was a baby. One day he put his hand in the fan. We had to take him to the hospital,” Julienne said. “It was not too bad.”
Every time Bryan lost to his brother, devastation. Tears. Meltdown. Gil is the classic older brother who did nothing but practice hard every day while little brother saw him as the Goliath nemesis on the court.
“We would play on a mini court and he wanted to win so bad, he would cry on the court if he started losing. He would immediately jump for happiness if he won a single point,” Gil recalled. “He would wander off and look for adults who were triple his size to play practice matches so he could use what he had just learned. He kept on doing that and next thing we knew, he was progressively getting better each and every day.”
The big challenge in a charming town like Hilo is numbers. Getting everyday reps was not a problem. Finding competition was tougher.
“It was hard for him to find someone to hit with. We didn’t know anybody in Hilo, so it was hard,” Julienne said.
The non-stop training began to bear the fruit of success. After Gil departed for Dartmouth, Bryan kept climbing. The adventures of father and son, Hippolyte and Bryan, on the road, had more ups than downs.
“Playing tennis on the Big Island, there’s no big tournaments, no (college) coaches coming over to watch him play. So we have to travel,” Hippolyte said. “We went to a tournament in Michigan. We had the last flight, but the tournament ended at 10 at night. So we slept at the airport until the first flight (in the morning).”
Here’s the kicker.
“Then he went to class that morning.”
It was on a trip during December 2024, when Bryan’s world transformed. He and his doubles partner were seeded eighth in a national tournament in Orlando, Fla.
“I played with my friend from Punahou, Sibby Rodi. We won the doubles championship. Honestly, from the beginning I was pretty sure we could win the whole thing,” Bryan said. “After that, I really started to focus on doubles a lot. I think I can do well in both (doubles and singles). I want to be better at singles, but my doubles is solid.”
After the peak-performance moment in Orlando, college opportunities continued to open up. Bryan played high school tennis for the first time that spring as a junior. It was a proud moment for the Vikings, whose last state champion was Andy Narido Jr. in 2004.
Having a teacher on campus whose son is the newest state champion is even better.
“My dad is my period-six teacher. He teaches nursing, bedside manner, all of that. He was a pharmacist back in the day,” Bryan said. “In class, I call him Mr. Assi. He told me to call him that.”
The long trips, the constant push for tougher competition, the development day to day, deeply rooted by family.
“That’s how you learn,” Hippolyte said. “That’s how you grow.”
The routine was regimented.
“Right after he finishes school, he gets a quick snack, and they’re on the tennis court 3 to 6 p.m. every day, Monday to Friday,” he said.
What keeps the relentless routine going?
“My wife loves tennis,” Hippolyte said. “She wakes up, and it’s tennis. When you love something, you can learn so easy.”
Bryan concurs.
“She always has tennis on the TV,” he said. “Every day.”
After a couple of summer tournaments, Bryan will leave Hilo for Yale in late July. He knows about Yale’s talent and depth. Cracking the lineup and playing is a possibility as a freshman.
“I hope so. My main focus is development. They qualified for the NCAA Tournament for the first time in years,” he said.
Yale is in New Haven, Conn. Gil is in graduate school at Dartmouth. His tennis career is over, but he still swings a racquet recreationally.
“He loves tennis. He still plays,” Bryan said. “He jokes that he can beat me, but I’d beat him now.”
Hilo, after all these years, acclimating from big-city life on two continents, has grown on him.
“When we got here, I remember that it was quiet and it felt really empty. It was so different. Then I ended up enjoying it a lot more,” Bryan said. “I prefer Hilo now.”
During the state tourney at Patsy T. Mink Central Oahu Regional Park last week, he stepped in as a doubles partner.
“He said, ‘Coach, I want to try and play doubles so we can win.’ After the match, I found out he didn’t take over the match because he didn’t want to disrespect the other player’s family,” Yamada said. “He knows winning isn’t the most important thing. Bryan is a likable kid. He respects the game.”
This season, Hilo had 11 boys and 10 girls on the tennis teams.
“I have so many fun memories of Bryan,” teammate Anwar Genz said. “My favorite one was during one of our matches. It was the deciding match to see which team would win and I was super scared. Bryan supported me the whole time, cheering for me every time I won a point. He was super excited for me after I won the match.”
These days, Gil Assi can see eye to eye with Bryan, eight years younger.
“Oh, I would say he’s OK as a brother. A bit annoying. But seriously, he has a big heart and is one of the kindest people I know,” Gil said. “Always willing to lend a hand and very considerate.”
From a tennis-only perspective, there’s a case to be made that playing junior and high school tennis on Oahu the past four years would have been better. Bryan doesn’t see it that way. In fact, he sounds like a young Andre Ilagan, who worked relentlessly at Kalakaua District Park courts with his father before and while he starred at Farrington. Ilagan went on to play at UH and is currently playing professionally.
“The court at Lincoln Park where I grew up playing, playing until 9 p.m., it got a little run down, but it’s my home court,” Bryan said. “My tennis wouldn’t be where it is today if I wasn’t here. In Hilo, there’s less to do, so every day we’re on the tennis court. Hilo has blessed me.”
