Meet the Georgetown native and former CCU sprinter heading to the Olympics. What to know

When the 2024 Olympic Games open July 26, 2024, in Paris, France, 10,500 athletes will participate in events, each with the singular goal of winning a medal.

One of those athletes lucky enough to call themselves an Olympian also happens to be a Georgetown native and former Coastal Carolina sprinter. Track athlete Melissa Jefferson qualified for the 2024 Summer Olympics along with her teammates Sha’Carri Richardson and Twanisha Terry following her second-place finish in the 100-meter event at the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials.

Jefferson is now one of the few humans lucky enough to call themselves an Olympian. Here’s what you need to know about the former Coastal Carolina athlete.

Melissa Jefferson saved her father’s life

Jefferson, who attended Carvers Bay High School and won Homecoming Queen, donated stem cells to her father in 2018 before winning the crown. Her father, Melvin Jefferson, was previously diagnosed with an early version of leukemia and needed either a bone marrow transplant or a stem cell transplant to survive.

Melvin Jefferson could not be reached for comment before publication.

Doctors deemed Melissa her father’s best donor after other candidates were deemed either unsuitable or only partial matches.

“All of her stuff is in me; I just don’t have the speed,” Melvin Jefferson said in a 2022 interview.

Melissa Jefferson is engaged

Jefferson posted on her Instagram Oct. 22, 2023, the news that she was engaged to her then-boyfriend of three years, Rolan Wooden II. Wooden, a former Coastal Carolina football player who graduated in 2022, proposed while the couple was playing the card game Uno on the beach; Wooden popped the age-old question by writing it in black marker on one of the cards.

“You make me the happiest person alive,” Jefferson wrote in her post. “I can’t wait for us to spend the rest of our lives together.”

Melissa Jefferson is a NCAA national champion

While Jefferson’s crowning achievement could potentially occur in Paris, France, as part of her Olympic career, the Georgetown, S.C. native also had a stellar collegiate one at Coastal Carolina.

A three-time All-Sun Belt First Team and multiple-time NCAA All-American in indoor and outdoor track, Jefferson won the 2022 NCAA Division I National Championship in the 60-meter dash, Coastal Carolina’s first individual national champion.

Apart from her time at Coastal, Jefferson was also part of Team USA’s women’s 100-meter relay race team that won the world championship in 2022. Jefferson also became U.S. Track & Field’s 2022 National Champion in the 100-meter dash.

North Myrtle Beach area is home to multiple Olympians

Jefferson’s participation in the 2024 Olympic Games makes her one of the few Grand Stranders to qualify for Olympic competition. In 2015, Nicole Landoskey of North Myrtle Beach won a gold and bronze medal in the Special Olympics World Summer Games in Bocce.

In 2022, North Myrtle Beach’s Anthony Biondo became the first gold medalist in surfing at the Special Olympics, according to MyHorryNews.