By Chris Chavez
October 17, 2024
U.S. Olympian Parker Valby, who in June wrapped up a historic career at the University of Florida that included six NCAA titles, has signed a professional contract with New Balance. She will be training under coach Mark Coogan as a member of Team New Balance Boston.
“I am excited to join the New Balance family and train in Boston with such an incredible group of runners. Family is very important to me and it was very clear that New Balance was the brand for me and I can’t wait to get started,” Valby said in a statement. “Boston already feels like home and I am honored to start my professional career with a brand that wants to support my dreams on and off the track.”
New Balance
Here’s what you need to know:
– Valby is coming off a 2023-2024 season in which she became the first female distance runner to win five national titles in the same academic year. She won the 2024 NCAA Cross Country individual race, the NCAA indoor 3000m and 5000m titles, and the NCAA outdoor 5000m and 10,000m titles. She went undefeated in 14 collegiate races this outdoor season and is a finalist for the prestigious Bowerman Award.
Her NCAA titles came in dominant fashion. Here is the margin of victory between Valby and the NCAA Championship runner-up:
- 9.0 seconds at the 2023 NCAA Outdoor Championship 5000m final
- 10 seconds at the 2024 NCAA Cross Country Championship
- 22.2 seconds at the 2024 NCAA Indoor Championship 5000m final
- 5.2 seconds at the 2024 NCAA Indoor Championship 3000m final
- 5.8 seconds at the 2024 NCAA Outdoor Championship 10,000m final
- 17.9 seconds at the 2024 NCAA Outdoor Championship 5000m final
Elijah Agurs / @elijahagurs
– She set two NCAA records this outdoor season, running 14:52.18 for 5000m and 30:50.43 in the 10,000m – and is the first collegiate woman to break 15:00 and 31:00.
– In addition to her accolades on the track, Valby has drawn attention for her unconventional training methods, which consisted of approximately 30-35 miles per week of running plus a heavy load of cross-training, primarily on the Arc-Trainer. She discussed her training in detail as a guest on the CITIUS MAG Podcast last fall.
– Valby signed an NIL deal with Nike in June 2023, which also ran for a few months after her collegiate season ended. Many of the top track and field athletes who signed NIL deals with major sportswear brands during college have gone on to sign with the same company as professionals, like Katelyn Tuohy with Adidas, Charles Hicks with Nike, and Nico Young with Adidas. The NIL deals, which are not performance-based, allow the NCAA athletes to familiarize themselves with brands, test out products and build a relationship with the companies before signing a professional deal. Valby is the first major star to break from the brand that supported her as an NCAA star.
– Instead, Valby has decided to join Team New Balance Boston, which had Elle St. Pierre and Emily MacKay qualify for the 2024 U.S. Olympic team in the 1500m. St. Pierre finished eighth in the Olympic final. Mackay reached the 1500m semifinals. Both women also earned medals at the 2024 World Indoor Championships. Coogan has coached another past NCAA cross country and track champion who went on to sign with New Balance, Abbey D’Agostino, who turned professional in 2014 and qualified for the 2016 Olympic team.
– Valby just missed out on making the U.S. Olympic team in the 5000m with a fourth place finish (14:51.44) but nabbed second in the 10,000m at the U.S. Olympic Trials in 31:41.56. St. Pierre also qualified for the Olympic team in the 5000m, but opted not to run that event, allowing Valby to potentially double, but the Gator star decided to focus her efforts on the 10,000 meters.
– At the Paris Olympics, Valby briefly found herself at the front of the pack during the 10,000m final but finished 11th overall. She told us after the race: “I’m kind of cooked. I mean, it didn’t feel awful. I don’t want to say what could’ve been, because this is what happened. It was meant to be. It was a good learning experience and I’m super grateful to be here and honestly just be able to finish. I was telling my coach a few days ago, ‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to even break 32.’ I was so unconfident in my abilities at this point. But I mean, I did it.”
Why The Signing Took So Long
If there were a track and field draft that mirrored the NBA and NFL, Valby and Young would have been the top two distance picks by any shoe brand. Young signed with Adidas shortly after the NCAA Outdoor Championships and qualified for the Paris Olympics in their pro kit. But if you were one of Valby’s 178K Instagram or 97K TikTok followers, you may have been waiting on pins and needles for her official pro signing post or a new kit to show up on the starting line of the Trials. Throughout the summer, she was fairly tight-lipped about who she was signing with and when an announcement would come.
Her father, Kyle Valby, who is not a track and field agent, took on the negotiation process, which included discussions with various brands in the months following the 2024 NCAA Championships. Despite being tied to Nike for much of the last two years of her college career, brands saw her value and potential enough to make offers. Setting records, winning NCAA titles, qualifying for the Olympics and then finishing 11th in the world – all while also delivering memorable on-camera moments – aided in her market value.
New Balance
Sports marketing executives at some of the major brands have started including clauses into NIL contracts that would allow for the sponsoring brand to get the right of first refusal or the ability to match offers from other brands to retain the athlete as a professional. Valby has not disclosed details of her NIL deal, but one can presume a possible Nike match clause was the hangup until it expired or she was granted a release.
So now that the ink on the contract has dried and she’s moving to Boston, the next big question is for Coogan: how to adapt and evolve Valby’s famously low-mileage training heavy on cross-training to both keep her healthy and make her successful as a professional. But no matter the approach taken, there are going to be a lot of eyeballs watching as Valby adapts to a system that made St. Pierre a global medal contender.
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Chris Chavez
Chris Chavez launched CITIUS MAG in 2016 as a passion project while working full-time for Sports Illustrated. He covered the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and grew his humble blog into a multi-pronged media company. He completed all six World Marathon Majors and is an aspiring sub-five-minute miler.
