Columbia University Men's Tennis

Perhaps no one bleeds Columbia blue like Howard Endelman ‘87CC, who began his tenure as the Bidyut K. Goswami Head Coach of Men’s Tennis and Director of Tenn...

Ismael Merino joined the Columbia men’s tennis staff as an assistant coach in October 2024, after previously serving as an assistant coach at East Tennessee State where he earned his BA and MBA degrees. During his time at ETSU (2013-18), Merino helped lead the team to four conference championships as a player and two as an assistant coach. Most recently, Merino worked as the head tennis coach at Centercourt Club and Sports in Chatham, New Jersey where he created holistic training sessions for high performance players and created training blocks for home-based professional players, including those competing on the ATP Tour and at the US collegiate level. Merino worked at Centercourt with current Columbia stars Michael Zheng and Nicolas Kotzen. Prior to his time at Centercourt, Merino was a traveling private high-performance tennis coach focusing on both the physical and mental aspects of the game. During his college career, Merino earned back-to-back SoCon Second Team honors in doubles. In 2016, he teamed up with Sebastian Yllera as the duo went 9-1, which was the second highest winning percentage on the team. In 2015, he was paired with Robert Herrera. The duo won 16 matches including a win over 5th ranked Georgia. Merino also earned 2014 Atlantic Sun Second Team honors, was named to the 2014 Atlantic Sun All-Freshman Team, and was named the 2014 Atlantic Sun Scholar-Athlete of the Year. In both 2014 and 2015, Merino went a perfect 7-0 in conference singles play. Merino grew

Tommy Sheehan enters his 20th year as Columbia University's Director of Strength and Conditioning. Sheehan, who is in his second stint at Columbia, was named Director of Strength and Conditioning in 2001. In this capacity, Sheehan supervises staff in all aspects of strength and conditioning for Columbia's 31 intercollegiate teams. He has been instrumental in the six recent Ivy League championships in men's tennis and has tutored Ivy League Players of the Year in Tennis, Men's and Women's Basketball and Swimming and Diving, along with several national qualifiers in Wrestling. Sheehan first came to Columbia in fall 1990 as a graduate assistant on the football coaching staff, reuniting him with Ray Tellier, Columbia's head coach at the time. Tellier had originally recruited the Buffalo, N.Y., native when he was the head coach at the University of Rochester. Sheehan spent three years on the Columbia staff and earned a master's degree in applied physiology. After a short stint as a New York State Trooper, where he earned top gun honors for physical fitness in the academy, Sheehan returned to Columbia as an assistant strength and conditioning coach. Nationally known throughout the strength and conditioning profession, he was asked to produce an instructional DVD for the Cleveland Indians, on movement training in an off-season conditioning program. It was filmed at the Indians' Jacobs Field and distributed to the players in the Cleveland system. Sheehan is one of the finest offensiv