Jefferson was an athlete herself, playing anything and everything she could: basketball, volleyball, soccer, softball and even trying a brief stint as a cheerleader. But organized football never was an option for her; football was for the boys.<\/p>\n
She found ways to satiate the craving she had for the sport, including countless evenings (oftentimes as the only girl) playing pickup games with the neighborhood kids.<\/p>\n
Jefferson often received praise for her athleticism, and she went on to play basketball at the D2 college level.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t until after college when she found her way back to the football field.<\/p>\n
Jefferson had been struggling to find her way, to decide on next steps, and found herself working at a local Pei Wei most evenings.<\/p>\n
She one night served Dennis Freels, the founder of Flag Football X, and she’d never look back.<\/p>\n
Freels invited Jefferson to suit up for a game, and the details of that matchup remain etched in her memory: stacking the defensive back and meeting eyes with the QB (Freels), tracking the pass overhead and reaching out in-stride to haul it in one-handed.<\/p>\n
“That was my first catch with Dennis. He was like, ‘Yeah, you’re on our team now,’ ” she laughed.<\/p>\n
Jefferson found joy again.<\/p>\n
She continued working at restaurants to make ends meet, fitting in shifts around her football schedule, but soon realized she needed a better financial plan. So, Jefferson enlisted in the United States Army.<\/p>\n
For 10 years, Jefferson served in the military \u2014 where she met her husband \u2014 and didn’t play football. Her service ended in 2020, when a medical condition was discovered that required Jefferson to have her aortic heart valve replaced. Her husband opted to re-enlist at that same time, however, and his assignment took the couple to Italy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jefferson was an athlete herself, playing anything and everything she could: basketball, volleyball, soccer, softball and even trying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[7,6383,6384,1025],"class_list":{"0":"post-225430","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-news-community","10":"tag-news-community-stories","11":"tag-news-index"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114893197648333448","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}