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 up in Arequipa, Peru.
