Santarelli has completed two seasons as the assistant coach of the men's tennis team, helping guide the Big Red to new heights in 2017. Cornell finished the year ranked 26th nationally on the strength of a 22-4 record, the program's second Ivy League title, its first at-large bid to the NCAA tournament, and its first victory in the national championship with a 4-0 win over Rice in the Baylor Regional.
Santarelli joined the Big Red before the start of the 2015-16 season after a very successful two-year stint as an assistant coach for both the men's and women's tennis teams at Concordia. In his first season in the coaching ranks at his alma mater, he was named the Men's 2014 ITA National NAIA Assistant Coach of the Year. He followed that up by being named the Women's 2015 ITA NAIA West Assistant Coach of the Year. He also worked at the Southern California Tennis Academy.
While competing with Concordia, Santarelli advanced to the NAIA National Championship all four seasons and made it as far as the quarterfinals his sophomore season. He was a two-time NAIA All-American, the 2012 ITA NAIA Senior of the Year in 2012, and he was also the NAIA Champion of Character recipient in 2012. He was ranked as high as seventh nationally in singles.
After earning his bachelor's degree in 2012, Santarelli finished his Master's of Business Administration at Concordia in 2015.
In January 2017, Dick `57 and Dale Reis Johnson `58 made an extraordinary gift of $1,500,000 to the men’s tennis program’s endowment fund. This fund will serve the program in perpetuity. In recognition of that very generous gift, Cornell University named the assistant tennis coach’s position in their honor. Santarelli is the first to serve the program in this capacity.
