Noel Ruebel Position: Head Track & Field Coach Experience: 2nd season Alma Mater: Purdue '78

Ruebel resigned from Wake Forest June 11, 2001.

Now in his second year as the head coach of the Wake Forest track & field program, Noel Ruebel is putting the Demon Deacons into high gear. Promoted to head coach last year after spending three years as an assistant coach for Wake Forest, Ruebel is in his 19th year of coaching overall.

Ruebel came to Winston-Salem after spending the 1996 track & field season at Ohio State. Prior to his stint in Columbus, he was an assistant coach for 13 years at Purdue University.

Ruebel has been one of the premier field event coaches in the country over the past decade and has an outstanding record of developing athletes during their collegiate careers.

In his four years on the Demon Deacon staff, Ruebel has clearly left his mark on the program. Under his watch, Wake Forest athletes have broken four different school records in field events - the pole vault, long jump, hammer and decathlon. In 1999, he helped the Demon Deacon program capture ACC individual championships in the 100 meters, 200 meters, 5,000 meters, 3,000 meter steeplechase, decathlon and the 4x100 meter relay. As a team, Wake Forest placed third at the ACC Outdoor Championships.

While at Purdue, Ruebel coached 11 All-Americans, 21 Big Ten Champions and 35 NCAA qualifiers. Ten of his athletes cleared 17 feet or better in the pole vault and ten of his throwers won Big Ten championships. His athletes broke every field event record in the Purdue record book and from 1988 to 1990, Ruebel's field event contingents led the Big Ten in scoring in five consecutive conference championship meets.

At Purdue, Ruebel coached Chris Huffins, who went on to earn the bronze medal in the decathlon at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. Ruebel has been with Huffins for a second place finish at the 1998 Goodwill Games in New York, two U.S. National Championships, a bronze medal at the IAAF World Championships and the gold at the Pan-Am Games. They have traveled to Athens, Greece for the 1997 World Championships, Talance, France for the 1997 and 1998 Decastar Championships, Gotzis, Austria for the 1998 IAAF World Challenge Meeting, Maebashi, Japan for the 1999 World Indoors and Seville, Spain for the 1999 World Championships.

A standout athlete at Purdue, Ruebel was a two-time All-American in the high jump. He won four Big Ten titles in the high jump (1976, 1977 and 1978 indoors as well as 1978 outdoors). He was twice selected as the Boilermakers' most valuable performer.

In 1978, Ruebel earned Purdue's version of the triple crown. He won the Big Ten Medal of honor as the school's top male scholar-athlete, was named to the Reamer's Club Varsity Walk as the student-athlete who brought national attention to Purdue and also earned the Red Mackey Award for athletics and leadership.

In his prep career, Ruebel was the first high school athlete in the country to clear seven feet indoors in the high jump, accomplishing that feat at Highland High School. Ruebel was elected into the Indiana Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1981.

His international experience includes participating in the Olympic Solidarity Courses, conducting a jumping clinic in the Philippines in 1985. In 1989, he participated in the National Sprint Developmental Clinic in Indianapolis.

Ruebel graduated from Purdue University in 1978 with a bachelors degree in physical education and health. He coached track and field at Bloom Trail High School in Chicago Heights, Ill., from 1979 to 1982. Ruebel and his wife, Deb, have a daughter, Tara (13), and a son, Monte (8).