LI 'Survivor' champ Tommy Sheehan tests his skills on MTV's 'Challenge'

After winning CBS' "Survivor" in 2019, Long Beach elementary-school teacher Tommy Sheehan says competing on MTV's "The Challenge: Spies, Lies and Allies," premiering Wednesday at 8 p.m., was immeasurably more comfortable.

"On 'The Challenge' they have beds and food," the 28-year-old Sheehan says cheerily by phone from the Hamptons, where he's relaxing before school starts in September. "So that's one bonus for the talent," along with being billeted in what he calls a "sweet house" in Croatia, where this 37th season of the physical and mental competition took place.

Yet the biggest difference from "Survivor," he says, is that on that island-survival series, "It was 20 people who had never seen each other — we didn't even know each other's names. Whereas on 'The Challenge,' these people come back season after season. They've been best men at each other's weddings. They hang out in-between seasons. So it's hard to come in as a newbie and align yourself or break up alliances when they've known each other for years," he says. "Rookies tend to be targets, especially if you're a winner of a show."

Another difference is that, "To get ready for 'The Challenge,' you've got to be running every day and lifting weights, where with 'Survivor,' you can be out of shape but as long as you can socially manipulate someone, you can get by." But for all the physicality of "The Challenge," he notes, there are also mental tests such as puzzles. "We call them equalizers," Sheehan says. "So it's not just who's the biggest and strongest winning. And there is still social manipulation like on 'Survivor.' "

A fourth-grade math and science teacher at Floral Park-Bellerose School, Sheehan grew up in Bayville but was born in New York City. Apologizing for having previously said different in some media accounts, he explains, "I usually just say I was born and raised in Bayville, but I was born in Queens, in Maspeth." His parents — retired NYPD officer Tommy and Bayville Primary school nurse Sandy — moved the family to Bayville "when I was around 2, and I lived there until I was about 23." He graduated from Locust Valley High School and then SUNY Cortland, and has been a teacher "for about seven years."

In the interim between his two reality-TV competitions, Sheehan proposed to longtime girlfriend Nicole Badillo, a pharmacist for Catholic Health Services in Melville who grew up in Northport. After postponing their wedding due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they have since rescheduled it to May 13, 2022, in Roslyn. Sheehan also served as "man of honor" at the wedding of his older sister, Caitlin, a commodities trader in Manhattan.

Whatever his fate on "The Challenge," the reality-TV section of his life-résumé is now closed, he avows. "I don't want to keep leaving my students, so I've just kind of put out on social media that this will be my last go-round, that I am done with reality TV and competing, because I want to focus on my career now," Sheehan says. "I think now is my time to just stay in the classroom, because I'm one of the few lucky people who love what they do."