Columbia's fourth Ivy League Championship team of the 11 its produced, and second under head coach Bid Goswami, fielded one of the strongest rosters ever in program history. The Lions boasted a perfect 9-0 mark in EITA matches to earn the conference title, rose as high as No. 17 in the national rankings and advanced to the NCAA Championships.
Comprising the roster were: Seniors Howard Endelman, Matthew Litsky, Keith Thomas and Phil Williamson, sophomores Lee Feldman and Robert Kresberg and first-years Jose Biaggi and Jeff Chiang.
Columbia excelled early on in the season, winning matches against power conference opponents Penn State, West Virginia and San Diego. The challenge of playing some of the top teams in the nation set the Lions up for success during the grind of the EITA slate. Columbia began conference play with wins against Princeton and Navy, following those with shutouts of Army and Cornell. Harvard, the reigning two-time conference champ, was dispatched in an easy 8-1 decision, with Dartmouth and Penn getting blanked as the regular season closed. In total, the Lions allowed EITA opponents to win just five team points in nine matches to a scoring differential of 73-5.
The season came to a head at the NCAA Championships in Georgia, with the Lions falling in a closely contested match, 6-3, to UC-Irvine.
The team dominance was reflected in the individual play of the student-athletes. Among the top eight singles players, none carried a winning percentage of lower than .647, while the top two doubles pairing went a combined 24-3 during the regular season. As a lineup, Columbia went 83-20 in singles, but even more impressive was its 49-1 showing in conference matches.
Columbia dominated the All-Ivy League selections in 1987, as the Lions garnered two of the seven singles selections and two of the three doubles nods. Williamson's prolific career culminated with an 11-6 season and his second straight All-Ivy League honor. He was joined on the singles team for the second straight year by fellow senior Litsky, who compiled a 15-3 mark at No. 2. In conference action, Williamson went 8-1, while Litsky was unbeaten at 9-0. The duo combined to create a nearly unbreakable doubles team for Columbia. Williamson and Litsky put together a 13-1 campaign and an 8-0 mark against conference foes as the Columbia's No. 2 pairing.
The Lions top doubles tandem featured Endelman and Thomas. Both previous All-Ivy doubles selections with different partners, the stellar tandem players earned an 11-2 record overall and a 6-0 mark in conference as the top doubles team. Thomas and Endelman each held their own in singles play, as both won 13 matches as seniors.
The singles lineup rounded out with two underclassmen in Kresberg and Chiang. Kresberg posted a 16-2 mark at No. 5, while Chiang held down the No. 6 spot with a 15-2 record.
