Alejandro Ruiz enters his second season as an assistant coach for the Tornado track and field teams. He will be primarily responsible for working with the program’s distance runners, which includes the 5,000- and 10,000-meter runs as well as the 3,0000-meter steeplechase.
With Ruiz on the sidelines, the Tornados were able to show significant signs of improvement during their second year of varsity competition in 2011. New school records were established in four of the six events he oversees, including the men’s and women’s 3,000-meter run, the women’s 5,000-meters and the men’s 3,000-meter steeplechase. The men’s squad finished one spot higher in the team standings at the American Southwest Conference Championships by earning 13 more points than they did at the same meet in their inaugural season last spring, while the women’s team achieved 23.50 more points than they did at the ASCs the previous year.
Ruiz, who just completed his first year as an assistant with the Tornado cross country teams, comes to Concordia after serving as a volunteer assistant coach for the distance running program at Oklahoma State in 2009. The men’s program won the NCAA Division I National Championship as well as the Midwest Regional and Big 12 Conference titles with him on the sidelines.
As an undergraduate student, Ruiz lettered all four years with the Cowboy men’s cross country, indoor and outdoor track and field programs. He competed at the 2006 NCAA Cross Country Championships in Terre Haute, Ind. after helping lead the squad to the Midwest Regional title. Outdoors, Ruiz, who was a member of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars, most notably advanced to the 2009 NCAA Midwest Regional by clocking in a personal-best time of 14:06.67 in the 5,000-meters at the Stanford Invitational. He also met the NCAA provisional mark in the 10,000 by registering a personal-best time of 29:17.57 at Stanford’s Payton Jordan Invitational and was also the runner-up finisher (30:38.59) at the Big 12 Conference Championships his senior year.
On the scholastic level, Ruiz was the back-to-back Texas state champion in the 1,600- and 3,200-meter runs at Elgin High School in 2003 and 2004. His 2004 time of 4:13 in the 1,600 broke the Class 3A record that had stood unchallenged for 33 years, earning the runner a place on the University Interscholastic League (UIL) All-Century Team in the event for his efforts.
Ruiz, a seven-time First-Team Academic All-Big 12 selection in cross country and track and field, received a bachelor’s degree as a double major in business administration and Spanish from Oklahoma State in 2009. He also earned the Arthur Ashe, Jr. Sports Scholar Award each year from 2005-08, the school’s student-athlete academic award between 2004-09 and a Big 12 Postgraduate Scholarship.
A native of Elgin, Texas, Ruiz is an elite runner for the Austin Track Club. He recently finished 27th among a competitive field of 91 runners at the 2011 USA Cross Country Championships in San Diego, navigating the 12,000-meter course in 37:55, and currently resides in Austin.
