The Golden Boy, Varsity Blues & Prison: Gordie Ernst’s Fall and Fight Back

The Obama’s Tennis Coach

When I talked with Gordy Ernst, one detail hit me right away. Here’s a guy who coached tennis at Georgetown University for over a decade, but he also had another gig that most people can’t even imagine. He was teaching tennis to the Obama family at the White House.

“Oh my God, it’s really funny in the beginning,” Gordy told me. “In the beginning, there was a really formal process, but then over time, I’ve been there so many times that I wouldn’t say you bypass certain things, but they’re more comfortable with you.”

The connection happened through Mark Howard, a Georgetown professor involved in criminal justice reform. Howard was at a party where some of Obama’s people mentioned they were looking for a tennis instructor for Michelle. Howard recommended Gordy, and what followed was eight years of coaching the First Family at the White House, Camp David, and Martha’s Vineyard.

Michelle Obama, according to Gordy, was all business. “Michelle is a worker, right? She’s so into it. And she just like, for instance, her back end, we probably hit 10,000 back ends to get it right.”

Growing Up in the Ernst World

Gordy’s story starts in Rhode Island with a father who was a legendary high school coach. His dad died in 2016, but at the funeral, 750 people signed the guest book. Nearly everyone in that receiving line told stories about how his father had touched their lives or their kids’ lives.

This wasn’t a traditional childhood. “We just grew up in a locker room,” Gordy explained. When he was five years old, he was playing at his dad’s high school practices, on the rink with the hockey team, on the tennis court with the players. There weren’t really choices involved. His father would call other coaches and arrange where Gordy would play.

The results were undeniable. In high school, Gordy was the number one hockey player in New England as a freshman and nearly unbeatable in tennis. He went on to play both sports at Brown University, something almost unheard of today.

“Back then, it was cool to be a two or three sport athlete,” he said. “Now kids are led to believe that unless they go all in when they’re eight years old and don’t play any other sport, then they’re going to fall behind.”

From Wall Street to the Coaching Life

After college, Gordy tried the business world, working in bonds on Wall Street. He wasn’t happy. The turning point came during a weekend hockey game back home in Rhode Island. An old friend skated over and made an observation that changed everything.

“Paulie McCabe said, ‘Look, your dad’s the happiest guy on the planet,” Gordy remembered. “And it just hit me like maybe I should think about coaching.”

He resigned from his Wall Street job and started looking at hockey coaching positions. Breaking into hockey coaching proved difficult, but tennis was different. Within a week, he had five offers to be an assistant coach. After a year at Northwestern, he became a head coach at Penn, then eventually landed at Georgetown.

When the Nightmare Landed

Gordy had left Georgetown the year before the Varsity Blues scandal broke. He was coaching at the University of Rhode Island when everything exploded. The way he describes it, nobody saw it coming.

“I was taking my daughter to school. My wife called me and said, the FBI is here with a warrant for your arrest. And I just was like, you know, it’s awful. You feel like you just got pounded.”

The whole thing started with someone else’s arrest. A guy involved in stock manipulation offered information about college admissions fraud in exchange for a better deal. That led investigators to Rick Singer and the broader scheme. Once they had Singer, he started setting everyone else up.

Gordy found himself in a holding cell, still not knowing what was happening. When the public defender showed up and slid the indictment under the door, that’s when reality hit. His name was on it, and it was already all over the news.

The Long Wait and What Comes Next

The legal process dragged on for years, partly because of COVID delays. Gordy describes it as being in limbo, with your head constantly telling you it’s going to be worse while everyone around you offers different predictions about what will happen.

During that time, he stayed busy with three different jobs and kept playing hockey to burn off stress. He had supportive friends who helped him through it.

Reflecting on his father’s influence, Gordy mentioned something his dad always told him. His father had worked for Dave Gavitt, who started the Big East basketball conference. “He always just tell me, just remind me, don’t break any rules, don’t break any rules, right?”

The irony wasn’t lost on him. His father was “an ultimate hustler” in how he ran his programs and promoted his family, but he never would have crossed a line into anything criminal.

Gordy’s story is still being written. The golden boy who dominated Rhode Island sports, coached at an elite university, and taught tennis to a President’s family is now figuring out what comes next after his nightmare became reality.