Ex-georgetown coach gets two and a half years in bribery scandal

Ernst told the judge that he lost his moral compass and acted out of line with what he taught his own players

A former Georgetown University tennis coach who once coached former U.S. president Barack Obama’s family was sentenced Friday to two and a half years in prison for pocketing more than $3 million (U.S.) in bribes in exchange for helping wealthy parents cheat their kids’ way into the school.

The sentence for Gordon Ernst is by far the toughest punishment handed down so far in the sprawling college admissions bribery scandal that shined a light on the lengths some rich parents will go to get their kids into the nation’s most selective schools.

Prosecutors had sought four years behind bars for Ernst, 55, who admitted to accepting nearly $3.5 million in bribes over a decade to designate the children of deep-pocketed parents as recruits even though they weren’t Georgetown-calibre players.

Ernst told the judge in Boston’s federal court that he lost his moral compass and acted out of line with what he taught his own players about making the right choices.

“I’m most ashamed that I didn’t follow what I was preaching to them,” he said.

In a letter to the judge, Ernst described growing up in Rhode Island with a demanding and physically abusive father — another Rhode Island tennis legend, the late Dick Ernst — whom he called more a “coach and tyrant than a dad.” Ernst’s mother told The Boston Globe that her husband was never abusive.

Ernst played hockey and tennis at Brown University in Providence before getting coaching jobs at

Northwestern University and the University of Pennsylvania. He was offered the head men and women’s tennis coach job at Georgetown in 2006 and was introduced by a friend two years later to admissions consultant Rick Singer, the mastermind of the bribery scheme, Ernst told the judge.

Of the six spots Ernst got every year to recruit tennis players, he regularly gave at least two — and often up to five — to unqualified students in exchange for bribes, according to prosecutors.