Track and Field Adds Expertise to Coaching Staff
Sep 21, 2010 | Track & Field
Sept. 21, 2010
NEW ORLEANS - Tulane's Director of track and field and cross country Eric Peterson announced Tuesday the addition of Russ Buller and Dana Ellis-Buller to the programs coaching staff. Russ and Dana have an extensive background in the sport of track and field and have experienced a high level of success in their respective competitive careers.
"I am thrilled to add Russ and Dana to our coaching staff," said Peterson. "They have an incredible wealth of knowledge and experience to impart on our student-athletes. Russ has been serving as our program's strength and conditioning coach since the fall of 2009 and I have had the pleasure of observing his coaching style and he has an innate ability to relate well to out student-athletes. He has great energy and enthusiasm for coaching and is very excited to get back into track & field.
Russ brings outstanding competitive credentials to the staff as a collegiate athlete and an international competitor. As a student-athlete at LSU from 1997-2000, Buller set the Tigers Indoor (5.80m) and Outdoor (5.71m), both records that still stand today. He was a six-time SEC pole vault champion and earned All-American honors five times during his days in Baton Rouge.
After becoming just the second pole vaulter to ever to clear 18-feet at the Penn Relays during his college days, he began his professional career and ranked among the USA elite pole vaulters from 2000-2008. He was ranked as high as the #3 vaulter in the USA during the 2006 calendar year, winning the USA Outdoor Championship over reigning Olympic silver medalist Toby Stevenson with a vault of 5.80-meters.
"Dana is working through her Tulane Medical School Internship and is training to qualify for the 2012 Canadian Olympic team," said Peterson. "She has offered to assist Russ in working with our athletes and I am very excited to begin working with these two talented coaches immediately."
Dana, who is Russ' wife, was a gymnast on the Canadian National team before taking up pole vault fulltime in 2000. Since then, Buller has placed among the top-six at numerous international events, won a pair of Canadian National Championships and competed at the 28th Olympiad in Athens, Greece.
Ellis-Buller held the Canadian National record in the indoor and outdoor pole vault from 2000-2008 and claimed the Canadian National Championship during the 2004 and 2005 competition seasons. In 2004, Ellis-Buller traveled to Athens to take part in the 2004 Summer Olympics and with a height of 4.40-meters, placed sixth. Her last international victory came during the 2008 competition slate when she was victorious at the IAAF Grand Prix in Osaka, Japan.
--TulaneGreenWave.com--
