At the start of Will Palmer’s tenure in Gainesville, Florida’s track and field program records in distance events were scattered across a four-decade span from 1982 to 2018. In 16 events UF’s high-water marks were set in 14 distinct years.
That was in January of 2023, just before the start of the indoor season. Palmer sits just over a month away from concluding his fourth track season at the helm of the Gators’ distance squad, having fueled an overhaul of the program’s storied all-time lists that was completed over the weekend at the SEC Outdoor Track and Field Championships.
“It’s a fun metric,” Palmer said. “I think it’s more a testament to the athletes that have believed in what the vision for this place is and really just believed in themselves and what they could do.”
Palmer, alongside his wife, Sam, who was an assistant coach from 2023-25, began leaving an early imprint on Florida’s record books. The distance medley relay team of Imogen Barrett, Vanessa Watson, Gabrielle Wilkinson and Parker Valby posted a clocking of 10:57.58 at Palmer’s second meet with the Gators.
“We didn’t run as fast as we wanted to that night,” Palmer said. “I remember kind of being a little grumpy afterwards, and [Florida head coach Mike] Holloway picked me up and he basically said … ‘The women just set the school record, you better be able to celebrate this.’”
That time reset an 11-year-old record and set the new standard for Florida’s distance program, as the Gators have gone faster in each of their eight relay performances across the last three seasons.
Valby has carried the burden of Florida’s recent record revolution. She set records in the indoor 3,000 and outdoor 5,000 meters in 2023 which she went on to reset the following spring. By the time she hung up her Gator kit, Valby owned the program records in the indoor 3,000 and 5,000 meters as well as the outdoor 5,000 and 10,000 meters.In the latter three distances, her best times also stood as NCAA records, making her the first collegiate woman to break 15 minutes for 5,000 meters and 31 minutes for 10,000 meters.
Capping off her impressive redshirt sophomore with a 5,000-meter national title — the first in any distance event by a Gator since 2010 — Valby’s success served as immediate validation that the Palmer era would be a bountiful one. With a full offseason now at his disposal, he was able to construct one of the best rosters in the nation through recruiting and leveraging the transfer portal.
During the fall, the new-look women’s squad earned its first SEC cross country title in over a decade. The season changed, but the success on the track didn’t. Valby established a new quartet of records, but newcomers Flomena Asekol and Elise Thorner also joined the upper echelon of the program’s all-time lists.
Asekol became the first Gator woman to break 4:30 in the indoor mile, running 4:26.47, which was also the third-fastest time in NCAA history. She replicated her record over the outdoor 1,500 meters, while Thorner ran 9:28.49 in the 3,000-meter steeplechase to overtake Florida hall of famer Genevieve LaCaze’s mark from the 2012 London Olympics.
Palmer’s women delivered performances worthy not just of the record books, but also the championship scoring tables. The Gators finished as a runner-up in both national championships and the SEC Indoor Championships. They also delivered a third-place finish at the SEC Outdoor Championships in 2024, and distance athletes delivered a whopping 132 of Florida’s 290 cumulative points across those four meets.
“I sat down with Will Palmer, and he told me he wanted to be great, he wanted to take the Florida distance program to another level,” Holloway said. “He’s done that. Will would probably tell you he’s just doing his job, but I’m very proud of him and very proud of the athletes.”
The first three years of Palmer’s tenure were characterized by a leap forward on the women’s team, but this season has showcased the fact that the men’s squad is closing the gap in the record books.
Prior to this spring, the only men’s records established by Palmer-coached athletes were in the indoor mile and outdoor 1,500 meters, set by Parvej Khan in 2024. Following the conclusion of his collegiate season, Khan tested positive for the banned substance erythropoietin in Panchkula after winning the Indian 1,500-meter title. He is currently serving a six-year ban.
During the 2026 indoor season, star freshman Kelvin Cheruiyot took 11 seconds off a 34-year-old record in the 3,000 meters and 26 seconds off an 11-year-old record over 5,000 meters. While Khan’s mile record remained, freshman Oussama Allaoui and sophomore Riley Smith doubled the number of Gators to have broken the four-minute barrier. Allaoui still managed to earn a place in the history books, however, anchoring a quartet featuring juniors
Miguel Pantojas and Gavin Nelson and sophomore Nicholas Spikes to a distance medley relay record of 9:23.16. That team shed nearly 10 seconds from a record that had stood since 2002.
It took a few seasons for the men to get their feet under themselves, but the pieces have now come together to imitate the success of their teammates.
“There’s that really small percentage of, like, ‘Hey, I see it, I believe it, I want to be a part of that,’” Palmer said. “The gratifying part is now, those guys that believed are here, and this is exactly what we talked about.”
At the Wake Forest Invitational in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on Apr. 16-17, the advancement of the men’s group came to full fruition. In just under 24 hours, three Gators set three school records: Cheruiyot in the 10,000 meters, Allaoui in the 1,500 meters, and sophomore Josh Ruiz in the 5,000 meters.
Cheruiyot’s performance was to be expected after his historic indoor season and Allaoui had run the third-fastest metric mile in UF history two weeks earlier at the Florida Relays, but Ruiz’s performance came somewhat out of left field. In March, he ran a personal best of 14:07.19 in his outdoor opener, but that was still 16 seconds off Dan Middleman’s program best from 1989. Palmer was expecting the Miami native to shave more time off, but he was blissfully unaware of Ruiz’s record-breaking capabilities.
“That was just a little beyond where I thought he was at,” Palmer said. “I’m pretty accurate with predicting where someone is at, but it’s really fun when I’m wrong like that.”
At the SEC Outdoor Championships from May 14-16, sophomore Graham Myers had the best opportunity of his career to break the 3,000-meter steeplechase record, which would secure the clean sweep for Palmer-coached athletes. Myers had run 8:42.63 earlier in the season, less than five seconds behind the 11-year-old all-time mark.
Myers, a Florida native, demonstrated impressive patience over the opening laps before throwing in a major surge over the final two. He passed four athletes, eventually scoring five points for the Gators with a fourth-place finish, and also had the fastest final lap in the field. The clock stopped at 8:34.68, cementing Myers’ place as the fastest steeplechaser in UF history by nearly three seconds.
“I was expecting the school record this season, and I’m really grateful that it happened at the SEC meet,” Myers said. “I knew it would just come with competing in the field … I definitely had my eyes on that, and I’m excited to get it.”
In the final individual event of the SEC Championships, Cheruiyot made his collegiate debut in the outdoor 5,000 meters and promptly claimed his fourth program record. Cheruiyot placed fourth in 13:32.08, 18 seconds faster than what Ruiz had run a month earlier.
The rapid improvement of the men’s distance team was reflected in the SEC scoring tables as well, as the women had seen three years earlier. That group had scored just 13 points at the conference outdoor meet across Palmer’s first three seasons, but they totaled 28 this weekend, the most of any event group on the team.
A major factor Palmer cites in his group’s historic performances over the past four seasons is that success inspires more success.
“I need to make sure I’m not left out,” Palmer said. “That can be really powerful. You’re no longer trying to go against the grain; it’s like you start getting pulled in a positive direction.”
The next meet that positive direction will lead the Gators to is the NCAA East Regional, hosted in Lexington, Kentucky, from May 27-30.
Contact Paul Hof-Mahoney at phof-mahoney@alligator.org and follow him on X at @phofmahoney.
Paul is a senior in his fourth semester on the track and field/cross country beat for The Alligator. In his free time, you can increasingly see him jogging around Gainesville or endlessly falling deeper down the rabbit hole that is track Twitter.
