Parker Valby, who won six NCAA titles at the University of Florida, set two collegiate records, and made the Olympic team as a 21-year-old, has signed a pro contract with New Balance.
She’ll train in Boston with New Balance Boston and be coached by Mark Coogan. New Balance Boston is home to American Olympians Elle St. Pierre, Emily Mackay, and Heather MacLean, among other accomplished athletes.
Valby has moved to Boston and is living in temporary quarters while she looks for a furnished apartment. She has already run with Team New Balance Boston on several occasions.
“The company felt like the right fit for me, and I’m super excited to get going with them and super excited for what’s to come,” Valby said in a phone call with Runner’s World on October 11. “It’s awesome to finally be here and get to train with the [team].”
She said it is strange for her not to be focused on cross-country at this time of the year, as she had been for the past four years. But after almost 11 months of racing, from September 2023 through August, she took a long break.
“I am just listening to what Mark tells me to do,” she said. “We’ll build a good base, get ready for some indoor races, a good spring, obviously the big goal is Worlds in September.”
A different kind of agreement
Running sponsorship contracts typically come with confidentiality clauses, and the terms of Valby’s agreement with New Balance are not public. Pete Riley, who heads New Balance sports marketing for running, indicated the deal takes Valby well beyond the next Olympics in 2028.
The company expects to use Valby in its marketing.
“I can’t get into the details of it, but there are going to be things coming that are going to certainly excite a young audience, especially a high school athlete,” Riley said. “We’ll be utilizing Parker’s expertise and also utilizing Parker to help drive some of our running product.”
Many companies, including Nike, On, and Puma, expressed interest in signing Valby as her senior year at Florida came to a close. Her résumé made her the top prospect coming out of college, the equivalent of a No. 1 draft pick in football or basketball.
In June, Runner’s World reported that running shoe industry insiders were expecting her to command an annual base payment of between $650,000 and $800,000 per year. But Valby’s value likely climbed from there, as she went on to finish fourth and second in two events at the U.S. Olympic Trials and make the Olympic team in the 10,000 meters. She even briefly took the lead in the Olympic 10,000 meters late in the race. She ultimately finished 11th in 30:59.
Her father, Kyle Valby, who is a pharmaceutical company executive used to negotiating multimillion-dollar deals, served as Valby’s agent during talks with brands. He passed the World Athletics agent exam in June. Agents are typically compensated with 15 percent of an athlete’s endorsement deals, bonuses, and prize money from races. By employing her dad, who wouldn’t take payment from his daughter, Valby avoided that expense.
And, more important, she had his undivided attention. With his daughter as his only client, Kyle Valby was free to think outside the traditions that have bound running deals in the past. He networked with agents from the NFL, NBA, tennis, and Hollywood as he approached her negotiations.
“Many of the companies wanted to approach Parker’s contract as a transaction, simply crossing out one athlete’s name and putting in Parker’s, crossing out their compensation and putting in Parker’s,” Kyle Valby told Runner’s World. “They wanted Parker to fall in line with what everybody else was doing.”
He said it was important to them that her deal be unique and tailored to her goals—he used the word “disruptive”—and New Balance delivered.
“I wanted to be part of a company that wants to grow the running world together,” Parker Valby said. “I’m super excited to do that with this partnership.”
Said Kyle Valby: “There are a couple of huge surprises coming soon. This is a historic deal.”
Sudden success
Little about Valby’s path through running has been conventional so far.
Early on, when the family lived in Woodbury, Connecticut (the Valbys moved to Florida before Parker’s eighth-grade year), they could tell she was intense. As a 4-year-old playing tee ball on a co-ed team, Valby, a left-handed batter, was reliably smacking the ball into outfield. Kyle Valby took to calling her “Little Papi,” a play off of Big Papi, the nickname for popular Red Sox slugger David Ortiz.
Kyle Valby took her to a father-daughter dance when she was seven, which featured a hula hoop contest for all the daughters. The younger Valby, who had never hula hooped, did not win.
She spent the next two years practicing the hula hoop. “I can hula hoop for hours, to this day,” she said.
At age 12, Valby ran a mile in 5:40. According to family lore, she told her dad (also fiercely competitive), “I’m faster than you.” He took to the family treadmill in the basement and knocked out a 5:25 mile, while his wife, Tiffany, and their children watched.
Parker and her older brother, Colson, trudged upstairs, and when the kids were out of sight, Kyle Valby doubled over, trying to catch his breath. His wife wondered if he needed medical attention.
A few weeks later, Parker Valby ran a 5:15.
She was a sudden arrival on the NCAA scene as a sophomore in 2022, when she finished second to Katelyn Tuohy of North Carolina State University at the NCAA outdoor championships in the 5,000 meters. Valby had been injured for much of the spring, but with intense cross training, she was able to maintain her fitness and come within two seconds of Tuohy and the national title.
In the fall of 2022, again running against Tuohy, Valby got out to a large lead at the NCAA cross-country championships, before Tuohy reeled her in and won by three seconds.
Valby won her first NCAA title in 2023, as a junior, when she won the outdoor 5,000 meters in 15:30.57. She had a visible hitch in her stride throughout the race and said it was caused by a nerve issue. She took several weeks off of running after the collegiate season, and when she returned to running in the fall, she kept cross-training as a major component in her training so she could stay healthy. Valby is partial to the Arc trainer, putting in several hours each week on the machine.
In 2023, she won the outdoor cross-country title. (Tuohy, who was sick, finished fifth and led NC State to a team title.) In 2024, Valby then went on to win NCAA titles indoors in the 3,000 meters and 5,000 meters and outdoors in the 5,000 meters and 10,000 meters.
An early Nike deal
During her junior year of college at Florida, before she had won her first NCAA title, Valby had signed a name-image-likeness (NIL) deal with Nike, negotiated by the agent Tom Ratcliffe. Written into that deal was a right-of-first-refusal clause, which lasted for six months after her final collegiate race and gave Nike the first chance to sign her as a pro.
Although agents debate whether those clauses in NIL deals are legally enforceable, Valby and her dad delayed her pro contract signing. Usually athletes of Valby’s caliber announce pro deals as soon as the outdoor NCAA season ends, before the start of the U.S. championships.
Valby is the first high-profile distance runner who has had an NIL deal with a major shoe brand and then gone on to sign a pro deal with a different shoe company. Tuohy had an NIL with Adidas and signed with Adidas, as did Northern Arizona University star and 2024 Olympian Nico Young. Olivia Markezich and Maia Ramsden had NIL deals with On and are now training with the On Athletics Club in Boulder, Colorado.
Parker Valby competes in the 10,000 meters at the 2024 Olympic Trials. She finished second and earned a trip to Paris.
In June 2024, at the U.S. Olympic Trials, the meet that picked the Olympic team for Paris, Valby was still racing in her Florida uniform, and her college coaches, Will and Samantha Palmer, continued to coach her through the Games.
This summer, Nike began reorganizing its pro training groups, and it started a new one, which will be coached by Mike Smith of Northern Arizona University. Nike has not responded to repeated requests for interviews from Runner’s World about their pro training groups going forward. But the Smith group was thought to be an option for Valby if she signed with the brand.
At some point after the Olympics, however, Nike apparently let Valby out of her right of first refusal in the NIL, opening the door for her to negotiate with other companies. Kyle Valby did not comment on the matter, and Nike did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Room to grow
Coogan, the coach of New Balance Boston, told Runner’s World that he and the team are looking forward to having Valby join them.
“We’re definitely excited,” he said. “She’s super talented, she’s a nice person, and I think she’s a good fit for the team.”
After she signed with New Balance, Valby sent Coogan a sample of her recent training. He agreed that she doesn’t run a lot of miles, but she runs more than people might think. He doesn’t plan to change anything major immediately. She’ll go to altitude camp with the team in Flagstaff, Arizona, in January.
“We’ll build off of what she’s been doing, and see how everything goes,” he said. “She’s been successful, so why change it up too much?” By virtue of adding in strides after runs, altitude camps, and training with people like St. Pierre, Valby is bound to improve, Coogan said.
Coogan and New Balance had quietly been in contact with Valby for months. In March, during the NCAA indoor championships held in Boston, Coogan found an Arc trainer for her to use. She stayed in Boston after the meet ended to meet the women on New Balance Boston, although Coogan was out of town during that visit.
Over Memorial Day weekend, Coogan flew to Gainesville, Florida, to meet with Valby and take her to lunch (at Whole Foods, her favorite place to eat in Gainesville). Over the course of the summer, he and New Balance executives met with Valby and her parents at the U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene, and later in Leuven, Belgium, where Valby was training after the Olympics started.
In his first meeting with the Valby, Riley found her to be quiet—far different from her goofy social media presence. “She was probably assessing the situation herself, figuring things out,” he said. “I always think it’s the people who don’t talk a lot and sit back and take things in who tend to be the smarter ones.”
Parker Valby poses in New Balance gear for the announcement of her signing with the company.
Both Valby and her dad are “very astute to what they want,” Riley said. “It’s not like it was just one brand or two brands that wanted Parker to come on board. She certainly had the pick of anyone she wanted to go to.”
After the Games, Coogan made a second trip to Gainesville, where he and Valby talked track, and he biked alongside her as she did an hour-long run.
He was impressed by how closely she follows the sport and her intelligence. And he sensed she wanted to be on a tight-knit team.
Elite running, he said, is too difficult to go it alone, especially when you’re young. “It’s hard work,” he said. “You need to be on a team with people that have similar goals. And people that like you and you like being around. It’s fun to go on a 10-mile run and chit chat and laugh and stuff. That was my favorite part of being a distance runner.”
Coogan, however, had little idea what was going on with the business end of the deal.
Valby and her parents traveled to Boston in September to iron out the final details of the contract. They went out to dinner with Coogan and several New Balance executives at Ramsay’s Kitchen on Boylston Street.
Who happened to be standing at the bar? That star Red Sox player (turned TV commentator), David Ortiz—Big Papi. Coogan called to him, and he stopped by the table and greeted everyone. It was a positive omen for the deal to come between New Balance and Little Papi.
A marketing splash
New Balance is a smaller company than Nike, and unlike Nike, it is privately held. New Balance has fewer pro athletes, although they have several big names in the NBA and WNBA, as well as Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers in Major League Baseball, and U.S. Open champion Coco Gauff in tennis.
Their track roster includes Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, the world record holder in the 400-meter hurdles, and Gabby Thomas, the 2024 Olympic gold medalist in the 200 meters.
Valby is their biggest signing to Coogan’s group since Abbey (D’Agostino) Cooper joined when the group launched in the summer of 2014. Although St. Pierre had one NCAA title to her name when she graduated, she, MacLean, and Mackay became better known for their achievements as pros.
Coogan isn’t sure why Valby chose New Balance over the other brands, but he feels it comes down to “people and relationships,” he said. “They really liked the small, boutique, family approach that New Balance takes.”
There is nothing small about New Balance’s announcement of the Valby signing, however. While some other shoe brands leave pro runners to announce their own signings on their social media accounts, New Balance planned a kickoff campaign with Valby that will include video, media, and a press release. In the coming weeks, her image is expected to appear on billboards in several cities across the country.
The world of sports marketing can feel like an inexact science at best. What alchemy of race times and appealing looks and social media followers (Valby has 178,000 on Instagram, nearly 100,000 on TikTok) translates into deals? How much is sports, how much is marketing? Why do some athletes have it made, while others, who have run nearly as fast in college, go sponsor-less?
Riley says for New Balance, speed is the most important piece.
“Performance first, that’s my perspective, and you build the elements onto it,” he said. “If an athlete comes with that full package, which some athletes do, and I think Parker has come with that, Sydney [McLaughlin] came with that, it’s a great mix to have.
“Having the best athletes in the U.S., having them wearing our product and competing on the biggest stage, brings super credibility and authenticity to who we are.”
Sarah Lorge Butler is a writer and editor living in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World since 2005. She is the author of two popular fitness books, Run Your Butt Off! and Walk Your Butt Off!