Uljas Earns Weekly Big 12 Honor

DALLAS, Texas?Nebraska sophomore Egle Uljas was named Big 12 Conference Women’s Track and Field Athlete of the Week Tuesday for her performance during last weekend’s Frank Sevigne Husker Invitational. She broke the Husker women’s indoor 800-meter run school record with a personal-best time of 2:05.30.

Uljas became NU’s fifth NCAA automatic qualifier this season while recording the nation’s No. 2 time for the 800 meters with her win on Saturday. She broke former Husker great Lisa Darley Graham’s 1991 school-record mark of 2:06.93 and the Bob Devaney Sports Center record shared by North Carolina’s Alice Schmidt (2:05.33) and Colorado’s Mary Decker [2:05.3 (yards)]. Uljas, a native of Tallinn, Estonia, also claimed a new Estonia national record during her first 800-meter race of the season, erasing the former record of 2:05.57.

A 2004 Olympian in the 400 meters for Estonia, Uljas switched her specialty race to the 800 meters midway through the 2005 outdoor campaign, her first season at Nebraska. She reached the 800-meter final at the 2005 NCAA Outdoor Championships, but was disqualified from the race after suffering a fall midway through the final backstretch. The sophomore owns an outdoor career-best mark of 2:02.92, which she set at the Athletissima IAAF Super Grand Prix meet in Lausanne, Switzerland, during the summer of 2005. She already ranks among the Huskers’ all-time top-10 performers for four different events (indoors: 400 meters, 600 yards, 800 meters; outdoors: 800 meters).