Director of Strength & Conditioning, Columbia University
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 offensive players in the University of Rochester's gridiron history. A two-time All-American as both a junior and senior, he ranks among the Yellowjackets' all-time leaders in virtually every receiving category. He was inducted into Rochester's Athletics Hall of Fame in 2005.
Sheehan was recognized as a Master Strength and Conditioning Coach by the Collegiate Strength and Conditioning Coaches Association (CSCCa) in 2020. The Master Strength and Conditioning Coach honor represents the highest accolade given in the strength and conditioning coaching profession and the awards ceremony is the highlight of the association's national conference each year.
Sheehan and his wife, Dr. Tricia Lipani, live in Harlem with their daughters Giuliana (11) and Carolina (8). Dr. Lipani, a former Columbia track and field athlete, is a clinical psychologist in the special needs clinic at Columbia University Medical Center.
