@uljase
Egle Uljas enters her second season as an assistant distance coach, after joining the Arizona Cross Country and Track and Field programs in the 2023-24 season. Prior to joining the Wildcats, Uljas has an exhaustive list of accomplishments as a professional and collegiate runner, musician, and sports director.
During the 2023 cross country season, Uljas helped coach five women and six men to the NCAA Western Regional Championships, where the men’s team placed 15th overall. The men’s team posted three top three finishes during the year, most notably finishing runner-up at the Dave Murray Invitational, the program’s annual home meet. The women’s team also posted three top five finishes, with the highest coming at the George Kyte Invitational in a third-place finish. Iker Sanchez Lopez finished runner-up in the men’s 8k at the UC Riverside Invitational, which marked the highest individual finish for a Wildcat during the season. During the 2024 outdoor season, the distance program had five first-place finishes and Cooper Quigley finished seventh in the 3000m steeplechase to score points for the Wildcats at the Pac-12 Championships. In the indoor season, the team had one first-place finish.
In August of 2023, Uljas’ project for the Olympian Artists program was accepted by the Olympic Committee and is scheduled to be performed in the Spring of 2024 in Paris. This project is a promotional event leading towards the Paris Olympics and is reflecting Olympic values and ideas in collaboration with the Olympic Committee.
From 2020-2022, Uljas worked as a Sports Director at the UCF Wesley Foundation at Navarro College. Her responsibilities included mentoring, preparing student-athletes for high performance both psychologically and mentally, organizing weekly events for student-athletes, planning community service projects, writing grants, conducting research and surveys among student-athletes in regard to preparation for high performance, researching and surveying student-athletes at Navarro College and musicians at Baylor University, organizing fundraising events and running competitions. She worked with the basketball, soccer, baseball, softball and volleyball teams.
In 2018, she performed at the Athlete's Gala in Tallinn in collaboration with Estonian slackliner Jaan Roose (3-time world champion and the holder of numerous world records) and Youth Orchestra Reaalmazoor conducted by Rasmus Puur.
In 2017, she qualified for the World Tower running Championships while being ranked second in the world. In addition to tower running, she participated in Red Bull 400m races. In 2016, she won the Red Bull 400m race in Titisee, Germany.
From 2008-2009, Uljas finished her collegiate running career as a transfer student-athlete at Baylor University and was coached by Todd Harbour and Michael Johnson's Coach Clyde Hart. She had the opportunity to train alongside Olympic Champions Sanya Richards and Jeremy Wariner.
In 2006, she ran school record times in the 600m (1:28.42) and 800m (2:05.30) for her previous school, the University of Nebraska. She also ran the 4th fastest time in the world in the 600 yards of 1:18.44. On several occasions, she was named the Big 12 Athlete of the Week. In 2005, she was also named the Best Newcomer of the Year in the conference. Uljas was a member of the Nebraska Women’s winning teams at both the Indoor Big 12 Championships and the Outdoor Big 12 Championships in 2005.
During her first year at Nebraska, she provided a boost in the middle distance and relay events. Some of Uljas’ running accomplishments at the time included competing at the IAAF World Championships for Estonia in the 400m, where she placed 32nd with a time of 52.94, advancing to the 800m finals at the NCAA Outdoor Championships with a personal best time, finishing runner-up in the 800m at the NCAA Midwest Regional (2:04.69), and finishing fifth in the 4x400m (3:39.07), sixth in the 400m (53.60), and sixth in the 4x100m (45.18) at the Big 12 Outdoor Meet. Additionally, she clocked an 800m PB time of 2:02.92 following the collegiate season at the Athletissima 2005 IAAF Super Grand Prix in Lausanne, Switzerland, claimed silver-medal honors in the indoor 400m (53.61) and took fourth in the 4x400m (3:38.04) at the Big 12 Indoor Meet, and won five events during the outdoor season (800m twice, 400m once, 4x400m twice).
In January of 2005, she was recruited as a student-athlete to the University of Nebraska to be coached by Victors Lacis. In 2005, she ran her PB in the 800m with a time of 2.02.92, which ranks as the second fastest time in her country.
In 2004, after high school graduation, she ran the Olympic qualifying standard of 52.11 and qualified to compete at the Athens Olympic Games. She reached the semi-finals with the Estonian Record of 51.91 and was nominated as the Best Track Athlete U20 and the Best Female Track Athlete of the Year by the Estonian Athletic Federation. During the Olympic banquet at Kadriorg Stadium in Tallinn, she gave a piano performance in the middle of the track and field stadium.
Uljas earned a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Music degrees in piano performance from Baylor University. She continued her studies with the Advanced Performer's Certificate in piano performance.
Uljas is an accomplished concert pianist and has performed in New York, Chicago, Houston, Russia, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, and Estonia. She has two daughters, and her husband is a Professor of Computer Science in the Systems and Industrial Engineering Department at the University of Arizona.
