Most states prohibit high school NIL deals. But what if you're Olympic swimmer Claire Curzan?

Claire Curzan capped the most decorated career in North Carolina high school swimming history with four more state titles and an American record in the women’s 100-yard butterfly in February.

Two weeks later, she dove into a new venture: name, image and likeness.

“I am so excited to join Team TYR!” Curzan, a senior at Cardinal Gibbons High School in Raleigh, wrote in an Feb. 25 Instagram post announcing her partnership with the California-based competitive swimwear giant.

By March 2, she’d secured another contract and her own personal discount code, CLAIRE10, with Death Valley Nails, a Texas-based company offering “vegan, cruelty-free and nontoxic” nail polishes and more.

If that timing looked strategic, it’s because it was.

College athletics changed forever last summer when the NCAA approved blanket legislation that allowed all its athletes to benefit monetarily off their name, image and likeness.

But amateurism, mostly, remains the name of the game at the high school level. The national governing body for high school athletics is strongly opposed to NIL, and the North Carolina High School Athletic Association, under which Curzan competed, bans athletes from accepting performance-based money.

As such, the Curzan family’s foray into NIL offers an intriguing case study.

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For Claire, 17, who swam for Team USA in the 2020 Summer Olympics, “it was definitely an exciting time,” she said. “I had never imagined I’d have these opportunities at this level in my life.”

And for Curzan's mother, Tracy, a former Division I soccer and lacrosse player at Harvard, it further illuminated the amateurism debate that long hung over college athletics and has now reached the high school stage.

“It is hard to decide on getting an education versus making a living,” she said. “If you’ve got a gift, you shouldn’t have to choose between an education and that … (NIL) just opened up all these new avenues.”

Olympic opportunity

Entering last summer, Curzan was already a household name on the club and high school swim scenes: a butterflying, backstroking record setter who ranked as SwimSwam’s No. 1 recruit in the 2022 class.

But, she said, “the Olympics definitely helped.”

Curzan drew national headlines as she finished second in the 100-meter butterfly during the US Olympic Team Trials in June 2021, qualifying for the Olympics at age 16.

“Everything was incredible,” said Curzan, who won a silver medal as part of Team USA’s 4x100-meter medley relay team in Tokyo.

Now established as a rising star, Curzan returned home to Cary and started feeling ripple effects: a handful of companies, she said, were reaching out to her parents to discuss partnerships.

If Curzan was a college athlete, those NIL deals would have been fine under the NCAA directives that went into effect July 1, 2021.

But Curzan wasn’t UNC football’s Storm Duck, who parlayed a unique name into a unique T-shirt. Or NC State basketball’s Elissa Cunane, who partnered with Italian restaurant and campus staple Amedeo’s. Or Duke basketball’s Paolo Banchero, who popped up in Panini trading card sets and NBA 2K22 MyTeam.

She was a rising senior at Raleigh’s Cardinal Gibbons High School, which, like dozens of other members, adheres to extensive bylaws governing state public high school athletics.

That includes Section 1.2.15: the “Amateur Rule.”

“So we had to make the decision,” Tracy said.

NIL: stay or go?

Under the NCHSAA’s amateur rule, “under no circumstance” can any athlete or team accept money “as a result of athletic ability/performance.” There are minor caveats for non-transferrable gifts, such as free meals and trophies, but it’s a mostly blanket rule that starts in ninth grade. The penalty is ineligibility.

That’s the context Curzan and her parents were working under last August, when she flew back to the Triangle with an Olympic silver medal.

Club swim or high school swim?

Under the former, she’d be free to sign an NIL contract while competing for the Cary-based Triangle Aquatic Center Titans but forfeit her NCHSAA eligibility. Under the latter, she’d put NIL possibilities to the side and remain eligible to compete for Cardinal Gibbons as a senior.

“I’d actually just taken an econ course, which was all stocks, stocks, stocks,” Curzan said with a laugh. “Like, the earlier you invest, the better. So that was in the background of my thought process.”

“But,” she added, “it’s not like anything was going to happen between the Olympics and the end of school …”

The road more traveled won out.

‘Exciting frontier’

On April 23, ahead of a national team event, Curzan posted an Instagram video of her packing up TYR products – flippers, pullovers, swim caps and more – set to Surfaces’ 2021 pop song “Come With Me.”

That clip, which racked up 4,000 likes and almost 85,000 views, was a prime example of the content Curzan has created as a brand ambassador since late February.

Non-disclosure agreements prevent the family from sharing further contract details, but there is a charitable aspect at play: Curzan is donating 100% of her Death Valley Nails proceeds to Walk For Hope, a local mental health initiative.

That slots in alongside what's safe to assume is a more expansive (and lucrative) NIL contract with TYR, where she joins an endorsement lineup that also includes Olympic gold medalists Michael Andrew, Katie Ledecky and Ryan Lochte.

“We’re learning almost every day,” her father, Mark, said. “It’s an exciting frontier.”

Though Curzan’s growing stardom is a good problem to have, it can also be a bit daunting. The family communicates frequently  with Stanford’s NIL-specific compliance department ahead of each and every deal, even if it’s as small as a one-off social post.

For Curzan, NIL deals come down to “seeing me as a person instead of just an asset,” she said. Yes, she’s one of USA Swimming’s top young talents. But she’s also a 17-year-old who loves doing her nails and hanging out poolside. She has a serious sweet tooth. She devours novels. She watches a lot of TikTok.

“I’d love to do the things that intrigue me and make me excited,” she said, “but if I’m either too busy or too stressed or something just doesn’t seem like an option for me, I’d want them to respect that, too.”

And so progresses a one-of-a-kind dip into NIL for a one-of-a-kind swimmer.

“Being able to enjoy my sport and also be able to benefit from it is super cool – I love it," Curzan said. "It’s a little scary sometimes with all of the new opportunities, but I think it’ll be great for the future.”

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Most states prohibit high school NIL deals. What one Olympian decided