Team USA sprinter Melissa Jefferson may have hit her stride later than most Olympic track stars, but she’s been on a speedy upward trajectory ever since. The 23-year-old native of Georgetown, South Carolina, and first-time Olympian took home the bronze medal for the 100-meter final on August 3—barely two years after the race that put her on the map.
Jefferson had her big breakout in 2022, when she won the NCAA National Championship for the 60-meter dash, becoming the first-ever individual national champion from Coastal Carolina University. Within a few months, she hit the international track scene as part of the gold-medal–winning team in the 4×100-meter relay at the 2022 World Athletics Championship. And this year, Jefferson led another team to the gold in the same event at the World Athletics Relays; she went on to finish second in the 100-meter at the US Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon, just about two months later, locking down her spot on Team USA with a time of 10.80—her personal best.
Jefferson is clearly making leaps and bounds in the sport just about as fast as she’s flying around that track. If you blinked and missed it, read on to learn more about the rising star sprinter.
1. Jefferson donated stem cells as a high school senior to save her father’s life.
When Jefferson was 17 years old, her dad was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome, a disorder in which the bone marrow doesn’t create enough new blood cells; the condition can lead to leukemia (blood cancer) if left untreated. What he needed was a blood stem cell transplant—and Jefferson’s blood was the preferred match out of all the relatives tested. “They always made sure that I knew that I didn’t have to do this, but I was like, ‘It’s my dad, I’m going to do it because I want him around for a long time,’” Jefferson told WMBF News.
So in the fall of 2018, when Jefferson was a high school senior, she went through the process of stem cell donation. First, you receive injections over the course of a few days to ramp up your stem cell count; then, some of your blood is funneled out through one needle, stem cells are retrieved, and the rest flows back into your body through another needle. Ultimately, the transplant would help restore her dad’s bone marrow and save his life.
2. She went pro straight out of her junior year of college.
Remember that breakout year Jefferson had in 2022, when she made it all the way to the World Athletics Championships? The race that initially landed her on that gold-medal-winning relay team took place at the 2022 USA Track and Field Championships, where she won the gold for the 100-meter in a big upset. Though Jefferson wouldn’t go on to medal for this individual event at Worlds, her swift (and unexpected) rise to national champion status was enough to turn important heads in her direction. She signed a professional contract with Nike and started competing at the pro level while continuing to train with her coach at Coastal Carolina.
3. She got engaged last fall to her college sweetheart.
Jefferson’s then boyfriend of three years Rolan Wooden II, a former Coastal Carolina football player, surprised her by popping the question during a beach picnic in October 2023, according to The Sun News. The two had moved to Claremont, Florida, earlier that year when Jefferson decided to join the professional track club Star Athletics, and one of her new training partners, fellow Olympian Twanisha “TeeTee” Terry, would play an instrumental part in bringing the proposal to life. (According to RunnerSpace.com, Terry was the only person Wooden told about his plan and helped him orchestrate the surprise.)
Describing the moment on Instagram, Jefferson wrote: “Rolan, thank you for coming into my life when you did…You make me the happiest person alive and I can’t wait for us to spend the rest of our lives together.”
4. She plays a big mental game.
Jefferson has long taken both a cerebral and spiritual approach to competing—reportedly writing down easy, medium, and hard goals ahead of each season in college and having “a talk with God” ahead of big races to stay focused on the present moment, per The Sun News. Ahead of the 100-meter final at this year’s US Olympic Trials, while reflecting on her current season, she told Flotrack, “The biggest thing for me this year has just been being really focused on being me, controlling what I can control, and not letting the things that are out of my control distract me.”