In just two years, Will Palmer has overseen quite a bit of success for the Florida Gators distance program. In 2023, as the associate head coach for cross country and assistant track and field coach, Palmer led the Gators’ women to their highest national ranking since 2009, an SEC championship, and a second place finish at the NCAA East Regionals. In addition to all of that, he and his wife Samantha were the coaches behind Parker Valby's record-breaking dominance, guiding her to NCAA titles, collegiate records, and her first Olympic team.

Before arriving in Gainesville, Palmer made an impact at Alabama, helping the women's team to an SEC title and a podium finish at the NCAA Championships in 2022. His coaching career also includes stops at Georgetown, Western Kentucky, Iowa State, and Oklahoma, shaping some of the best distance programs in the country. So today we dive into the vision behind Florida's rise in cross country, what made Parker Valby's training and mindset so unique to be part of, his coaching philosophy, and what he's building in Gainesville – plus lessons from a career spent developing talent and much more.

If you've been enjoying these office hours episodes, shoot me a message with other coaches that you'd like to hear from. We've got interviews with Mike Smith, Diljeet Taylor, Ed Eyestone, Laurie Henes, Dave Smith, Alex Gibby, Mark Coogan, and other top coaches in our archives.

Host: Chris Chavez | ⁠@chris_j_chavez on Instagram

Guest: Will Palmer | @willpalmxc on Instagram

Episode Highlights:

The following excerpt has been edited lightly for clarity. You can listen to the full episode with Will Palmer on the CITIUS MAG Podcast.

Building off the men’s team title from the 2024 NCAA Outdoor Championships:

There's not a lot of day-to-day discussion of, ‘We have to win this,’ or, ‘This is where we're going to score our points.’ I remember being at NCAA Outdoors in Austin – my first NCAA Outdoors [coaching] at Florida…We only had Parker running there, so I was a spectator for the whole men's meet, and a lot of the women's meet, truthfully. But [Mike] Holloway was never fazed about anything. Something would go really well, and he'd get super excited about it, but it would be very short-lived because we had another person to get into the finals…

That trend not only exists within a single meet, but it also exists within our whole program every year. We had a team meeting with our men and women separately recently. The message was, ‘You guys don't deserve anything. You've earned nothing. Don't walk around here like you have a title to defend – because that title last year isn't yours.’ We're a blank slate every year. We have to earn what we get. I think that's what's permeated through everything. Nothing is taken for granted.

Mindset on winning:

We definitely talk about winning. The hard part, and what's really important, is you have to stick to your process. It's like when I have an athlete race: They have an outcome in mind, and they're running for that outcome, but there are moments in that race that make it look like that outcome is not going to happen. In those moments, if you get caught up in how it’s going to unfold negatively – like if you have an athlete not make a final you were planning on – if you get caught up in those things, those are the moments that really test you. That's where you have to be like, ‘Onto the next thing. What can I control here in this moment?’ I think it's perfectly fine to talk about winning. Our kids know that anytime we go to a championship, we want to contend to win. But in those moments where things aren't going positively, or aren't going the way you expected them to go, it’s about how you continue to put your best effort out there.

What it was like coaching Parker Valby:

Parker's a different cat. She has a lot of what I would characterize as extreme personality traits that make her great, but you have to work with them too. She's stubborn as hell, and that makes her a relentless racer, but it takes time to build trust with her. That was challenging because she had already been very successful before we started working together. You couldn't look at her resume and say this person hadn’t had any level of success: she was the NCAA runner-up after missing a bunch of time and then she got hurt over the summer and was still the NCAA runner-up in cross country. She just had this tenacious racing style.

The first week of practice, the kids already had a plan that had been laid out, so we just let that continue. Sam and I just watched for a week and observed stuff then started to draw some conclusions about things. When we started working with Parker, she was a little nicked up at the time too. That added another element to things.

I remember somebody telling me even before we really started working with her: ‘You're going to sit down with Parker, you're going to talk to her, and she's going to give you this kind of blank affect. She's going to seem like the most disinterested person in the world, but when you talk to her a week later, she will have retained everything.’ That was 100% true. That's how she is. She doesn't like to let on that she's listening or how engaged she is, but she is one of the most engaged athletes you'll ever work with. She just has her quirks.

Perspective on developing athletes:

They have to have the marks that show they're capable, but honestly, you don't really know until you start working with someone. It doesn't matter if they're coming from Florida or they're coming from Kenya or they're coming from the UK or what have you. There's clearly something that's made this person successful and we try to have an environment where they're excited about the process of improving. Then you figure out, ‘What makes this person unique?’...The really great athletes – they all have a superpower. [It’s about] what makes them uniquely excellent and helping them understand what their superpower is and how they wave that sword around…You may not have laser vision, but you can fly. How do you use your ability to fly and max that out?

Listen to the full episode here.

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