Colleen Quigley wants to run fast, empower women athletes, and break the mold of traditional track and field teams.
The Lululemon athlete and 2016 Olympian is launching a new women-led middle-distance track team in Boulder, Colorado, focused on elite-level performance, strategic storytelling, and both individual and collective sponsorship opportunities. Known as Meridia, the new team will champion a shoe brand-agnostic business model that supports athletes while giving them the freedom to collaborate with any footwear or apparel brand partner of their choice.
Quigley wants to develop a new professional model for women runners—to provide holistic support for athletes, allow for greater sponsorship for up-and-coming runners, also widen exposure among mainstream audiences. Meridia will operate as a collective, compensating its stakeholder team members directly through a revenue-sharing model from a portion of the income it generates through team sponsorships, events, and merchandise sales.
Joining Quigley, 32, as founding members of the team are Annie Rodenfels, 28, Katie Camarena, 27, Madie Boreman, 26, Molly Sughroue, 29, and Skylyn Webb, 30, who will focus on events from 800 meters to 10,000 meters.
While racing for Nike’s Bowerman Track Club, Quigley placed eighth in the 3,000-meter steeplechase at the Rio Olympics in 2016 and was the U.S. indoor mile champion in 2019. She’s battled a variety of injuries over the past few years and also dabbled in triathlon in 2023, but she says she’s finally healthy again and is excited to race a range of middle-distance events on the road and track this year.
Rodenfels was the 2023 USATF 5K road racing champion and, along with Boreman, was a finalist in the 3,000-meter steeplechase at last year’s U.S. Olympic Trials. Camarena competed in the Olympic Trials in both the 5,000 and 10,000 last summer and has lowered her personal bests in each event (15:10, 31:45, respectively) this spring, while Webb has dropped her career best in the 800 to 2:01.47 in April. Sughroue has run 2:02.54 in the 800 and 4:30.89 in the mile.
Juli Benson, a professional coach and 1996 Olympian in the 1500 meters, will be an advisor to the team, as well as serving as the personal coach of Quigley and a few other athletes.
By crafting authentic narratives via social and digital media that go beyond race results, Quigley said Meridia can enhance athlete visibility to build deeper fan engagement and long-term brand value.
“This team will be athlete-led, athlete-driven, and athlete-owned,” Quigley said this week. “This has never been done before. We get to make the rules. No one at a shoe company is telling us what to do. We get to decide. I don’t know of any other organization with pro athletes that works like that.”
The Meridia team and its consultants have been in discussion with several non-endemic brands as potential team partners. Quigley believes Meridia’s unique framework will support diverse sponsorship opportunities that will help support runners, no matter if they have individual deals with shoe brands or not. In addition to Quigley, who has been a Lululemon athlete since 2021, Rodenfels is sponsored by Salomon, Boreman is backed by Bandit, while Camarena and Webb are supported by Saucony.
“Meridia is truly built by athletes, for athletes—designed to meet our needs in a real, tangible, and refreshingly unique way,” Webb said. “It reflects the kind of environment I’ve been seeking throughout my professional career and one I’m proud to be part of.”
Women’s Sports Continue to Boom
Viewership and sponsorship of women’s sports has been booming since 2021. Last year, advertising spending on women’s sports reached $244 million, a 139 percent increase from the previous year, according to TV marketing firm EDO. That surge corresponds with a 131 percent rise in women’s sports TV viewership during the same period.
In 2024, the Paris Olympics had an equal number of male and female athletes competing for the first time. The all-women’s Athlos NYC track meet, which debuted last fall, is returning in October, and last week it announced plans to become a team-based all-women’s track league in 2026 and would bring on Sha’Carri Richardson, Tara Davis, and Gabby Thomas as “advisor-owners.”
Stef Strack, the founder and CEO of Voice In Sport, a digital platform that provides women athletes with access to mentorship, experts and content, said the rise in popularity and exposure of women’s sports has led to a new age of entrepreneurship that is changing the game and creating more opportunities for women athletes.
But, she said, only 10 percent of global sports sponsorship funding goes to women, so the burden is on shoe and apparel companies and non-endemic brands to get behind new initiatives to be able to support more than just a small percentage of top-tier women runners—including the up-and-coming runners on the Meridia team.
Strack said the focus in all women’s sports needs to continue to be on performance and supporting athletes holistically and not appearance or body image.
“It’s a new era of athlete-led innovation in women’s sports,” Strack said. “Women athletes are not just competing, they’re actually building the systems they want to thrive in. That shift is a reflection of a larger truth that we have been tracking at Voice in Sport, which is that the old system wasn’t built for women and it still isn’t. So we have to change it. It’s beyond the athlete-led training groups. It’s also thinking about new startups that some of these athletes are starting. And, you know, we have to get scrappy because the system hasn’t changed, and it won't change fast enough.”
Christina Henderson, the executive director of The Running Event trade show for running footwear, apparel and accessory brands, applauded the Meridia team concept and said it aligns with the growth among women’s brands and initiatives in the running industry.
“This is next level. This challenges the status quo and is progress in the right direction,” Henderson said. “Kudos to Colleen and the team behind the vision.”
Next Steps
While Meridia will encourage athletes to live and train in Boulder, the team will also support flexible living arrangements, supplemented by regular training camps in Boulder to foster team connection and alignment. Athletes will eventually be able to compete in their own race kits with a Meridia logo or in a forthcoming Meridia racing kit.
The new organization is also hosting a virtual event called the Meridia Mile on August 7, inviting runners to join the team by racing a mile in celebration of community and shared goals. (An in-person race will be held in Boulder for local runners.)
Quigley, who owns a 4:19.2 personal best in the mile, will be racing alongside Sughroue and other top competitors in the professional women’s mile race on June 5 at the Festival of Miles event in her hometown of St. Louis. Quigley placed 13th in the women’s mile (4:33.19) at the Drake Relays on April 22 and 10th in the USATF 1-Mile Road Championships (4:41.10) four days later.
“Over the past decade as a professional athlete, I’ve gained a deep understanding of what it truly takes to succeed in this sport—on and off the track,” she said. “When I looked at the current landscape of teams, I didn’t see a model that fully met the needs I had identified, both for myself and for others in the sport. In the process of building Meridia, I spoke with dozens of athletes and listened to stories that helped shape our vision. Meridia is a reflection of that collective insight, and I’m incredibly excited to see how it evolves as we grow and build this team together.”
Brian Metzler is a Boulder, Colorado, writer and editor whose work has appeared in Runner’s World, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, Outside, Trail Runner, The Chicago Tribune, and Red Bulletin. He’s a former walk-on college middle-distance runner who has transitioned to trail running and pack burro racing in Colorado.
