When he leapt 7 feet and 6 inches into the air, breaking the NFHS high jump record as a senior at Yukon High School, Vernon Turner first began to think the Olympics could be in his future.

He had already earned an invitation to his first Olympic trials. But it rained. And while he executed perfect jumps during warmups, he had a poor showing and ultimately didn’t qualify.

Turner’s mother, Melonie Carpenter, knowing he was disappointed with how he performed, remembers the advice she offered at that moment.

“I’ve always told him,” Carpenter said, “‘Professionals are dedicated, and they put everything into whatever it is that they’re doing. And the ones that don’t put 100% in, or 150%, they don’t get to be in that little, small percentage.’”

When the Olympic flame is lit during the opening ceremony Friday, Turner will be the lone U.S. Olympian out of 592 athletes to represent Oklahoma. The former OU track and field standout who was born in Kansas City, Missouri, but raised in Yukon, is one of the youngest high jumpers in the field.

Turner’s family will make the over 4,800-mile journey to Paris to watch him live out his dreams. While excited, Carpenter said they’re nervous to travel outside the U.S. as they haven’t done so outside of cruises, and she’ll be on the edge of her seat watching her son compete.

More: 2024 Paris Olympics: A look at each competitor with Oklahoma ties

“I’m going to be a nervous wreck, I’ll tell you right now,” Carpenter said. “Vernon said he’s not nervous at all. He’s excited. So I’m glad to hear him say that.”

Turner was originally an avid basketball player who was dunking by his freshman year of high school before his coach forced him to go out for track and field. 

Carpenter has seen firsthand how hard her son has worked to cement himself as one of the best in the world. 

Turner’s work ethic was instilled in him by Carpenter, who worked night shifts mostly seven days a week throughout his childhood. Turner was forced to grow up fast and developed immense dedication for high jumping during his freshman year of high school.

Turner opened up to The Oklahoman earlier this month about the mental hurdles he faced after finishing dead last at the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary. For the past year, he’s buckled down and focused on getting himself ready for the leading international sporting event.

“The mental game is tough,” Turner said. “Throughout my whole career, it’s been up and down. … Learning the mental part of it is so huge. You have to mature and just be able to focus on one thing. You can’t let moments be bigger than you.”

More: Mussatto: Imagining Thunder’s Chet Holmgren, Jalen Williams on Team USA in 2028 Olympics

The past few weeks before heading abroad, Turner has been entrenched in final preparations and has worked with the Sooners’ vertical jumps coach Jerel Langley in Oklahoma.

“He’s really been working,” Carpenter said. “He’s been doing some different calisthenic things to get his ups going.”

Fans can follow Turner’s Olympic journey on the RIZZ app where he’ll be answering questions and giving updates along the way.

Turner’s family is anxious to get overseas to not only watch him compete on the world stage, but to watch him represent home. 

“He’s amazing, he’s worked hard,” Carpenter said. “It means a lot to everyone in Yukon, people that have watched him since he was little because he started here in grade school, he’s been here his whole life. They’ve all kept up with him, it’s amazing.”

2024 Paris Olympic Games

• When: July 26 through August 11
• Where: Paris, France
• Track & field: Runs August 1-11 (men’s high jump begins Aug. 7)

The ultimate fate of a prairie dog colony in Yukon is now known.

These wild animals have been a hot topic for years as new developments kept forcing them to migrate to the Northwest near Route 66. Last week, many people noticed cages at the location off of Sara Road, wondering what was happening.

According to the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, some of them were relocated to a new home. “All right guys now don’t take off,” said Kathy Barrett, who feeds the prairie dogs every day. “Come on, we’re not going to bother you.”

Barrett says she loves animals but has developed a soft spot for an urban colony of black-tailed prairie dogs in Yukon.

“They are my babies, but everybody has a responsibility to wildlife,” said Barrett.

Last week, the ODWC says it worked with a research team from the University of Louisiana to capture 38 prairie dogs using baited traps.

“While the prairie dogs were under anesthesia, they drew blood samples and they took a small tissue sample for their data to look at genetics and disease resistance,” said Kurt Kuklinski, Wildlife Diversity and Research Supervisor for the ODWC.

Kuklinski said his team then took the animals in carriers to a former colony site in northwestern Oklahoma.

“It’s not good for the prairies to be missing such an awesome creature on the landscape,” said Kuklinski.

He says by putting them back in their natural habitat, the hope is they will thrive.

“Where they are right now in that urban environment, they’re not able to expand their colony beyond that single lot and they face threats from traffic and can’t move and do well as a colony there,” he said. “Where we’ve re-located them, they’ve got hundreds to thousands of acres to expand.”

As for the rest of them in Yukon, several hundred prairie dogs remain and will still pop up for visitors like Reina Flores.

“You see how they stand? And there’s some over,” Flores pointed out. “They look like they’re dogs, they stand up, they’re very cute,”

And as Barrett says, very resilient.

“They’re survivors, that’s for sure,” she said. “I want it to continue, I want people to have the joy of seeing wildlife and just getting back to nature.”

The Department of Wildlife says none of the prairie dogs were harmed during the move. They say it could take years to move the rest of them out of Yukon.

Photos courtesy of ODWC.

OKLAHOMA CITY — A group of prominent Oklahoma-based tribal officials are demanding an apology from the Atlanta Braves after the team celebrated “Georgia Tribe Night” at its stadium last month.

Leaders of the Inter-Tribal Council of the Five Tribes announced Tuesday that they had passed a resolution calling on the Major League Baseball team to apologize for “honoring fraudulent groups that pose as tribes without federal recognition” and urging the team to conduct “meaningful consultations” with federally recognized tribes on “how to properly engage with Native Americans.”

The Council, which is composed of leaders from the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole nations, represents about 815,000 Indigenous citizens across the United States.

On June 29, the Braves posted on X that the team was “honored to welcome representatives from Native American groups in the state of Georgia, including the Georgia Council on American Indian Concerns, the Cherokee of Georgia Tribal Council, the Georgia Tribe of Eastern Cherokee and the Lower Muskogee Creek Tribe.”

Three tribes honored by Atlanta Braves are not federally recognized, but are recognized by the state

There are 574 federally recognized tribes and Alaska Natives tribes, including the Oklahoma-based Cherokee Nation, United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians and Muscogee (Creek) Nation and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians of North Carolina.

The three tribes honored by the Braves are not among them. They are state-recognized by the Georgia Council on American Indian Concerns, a nine-member legislatively created body tasked with addressing the “concerns of Georgia’s American Indians.”

An email to a Braves spokesperson seeking comment was not returned.

More: Citizens of these five Oklahoma tribes can now hunt, fish on reservation lands

Chuck Hoskin Jr., Cherokee Nation principal chief, said for a corporation like the Atlanta Braves baseball team to elevate — on his tribe’s own historic homelands — organizations that are “posing as Cherokee tribes” is “offensive” and “tone deaf at a minimum.”

The Tribes’ resolution notes that their ancestral lands covered most of the southeastern United States, including Georgia and the Atlanta area. The tribes were forcibly removed by the government.

He said the Braves already have a troubled history with how they depict Native American culture, particularly through their fans’ use of the “Tomahawk chop” gesture and use of the weapon in its branding.

Atlanta Braves have resisted calls to change name, fake battle cry

The team’s name, “Tomahawk chop” and fake battle cry have all generated controversy and outrage among Indigenous groups and advocates, who claim it supports racist stereotypes and does not accurately reflect Native culture. 

And while the Washington Commanders football team and the Cleveland Guardians baseball team have changed their names in recent years, the Braves have resisted calls to do the same.

Hoskin said the Braves’ decision to host the tribe night event seemingly doubles down on the team’s indifference on issues important to Native communities, which include sovereignty and their unique cultures.

“What the crowd is not understanding is that in doing so (promoting these groups), the Atlanta Braves are offending actual Indian tribes that represent actual Indians that have an actual demonstrable history of suffering with the state of Georgia,” Hoskin said. “But I think in doing so, they misplaced their resources and efforts. If they really wanted some healing, they know where to find us.”

‘We are trying to really correct centuries of misinformation’

He said efforts by the Georgia Legislature to give the three groups recognition does not make them tribal entities and there’s no viable standard to create “a state tribe.” 

Hoskin said the Braves’ decision to classify the groups as “Cherokee” undermines a generations-long effort on the behalf of federally recognized Cherokee people to remind the country about their forcible removal and that 468,000 Cherokee citizens live across the nation. An estimated 2,400 of them reside in Georgia.

“We are trying to really correct centuries of misinformation, sometimes intentional, sometimes whitewashing history, and it becomes more difficult when these organizations exist and when a multi-million dollar corporation with a great deal of power, and frankly, a great deal of responsibility, that its not exercising, enables this falsehood in front of tens of thousands of people,” Hoskin said. “It’s offensive.” 

Rhonda Bennett, council chair for the Georgia Tribe of Eastern Cherokee and who serves on the Georgia Council on American Indian Concerns, said she doesn’t believe the Braves owe an apology.

“We are honored for the recognition,” Bennett said.

She said the tribe’s ancestors remained in North Georgia after the forced removal of the Cherokee to Oklahoma Territory.

The tribe fought for federal recognition for nearly 45 years, but were denied mainly because they could not prove they assembled after the removal, Bennett said. Tribal citizens faced prison time, expulsion to Oklahoma or death if they violated a state law banning assembly.

Many of its 700 present-day citizens hold a direct lineage to the first chief justice of the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court in Indian Territory, she said.

“It’s a very sad story,” she said of Cherokee history. “Fighting among each other is just a sadder story.”

Her ancestors faced decades of discrimination by Georgia officials.

“It seems like since the 1800s, the Cherokee have had to fight against someone. We certainly do not want to fight amongst each other,” Bennett said. “What we want is our Tribe and the Tribe’s heritage to be preserved and recognized, and we want to be at peace with the Cherokee Nation.”

She said she holds out hope that one day Hoskin will want to meet with her to talk about what unites them and their shared Cherokee heritage.

“We are still here, and we have been throughout time immemorial,” Bennett said.

Oklahoma Voice is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com. Follow Oklahoma Voice on Facebook and Twitter.