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Idle hands? Not for Blackmon and ex-classmate
Published: 4/22/2011 9:35 AM
Last Modified: 4/22/2011 9:35 AM

Oklahoma State receiver Justin Blackmon picked up a slew of awards after the 2010 season. Biletnikoff Award recipient. Big 12 offensive player of the year. Fifth in Heisman balloting. He was on every All-America list.

Now it’s his former high school classmate’s turn.

Blackmon and Monique Burkland were chosen “most likely to appear in Sports Illustrated” by Plainview High School’s class of 2008.

Burkland will be honored at a May 1 Tulsa Sports Charities Legends in Sports Dinner as the 2011 recipient of the Larry Brummett Courage Award. She will be the first recipient since cancer survivor Caleb Tiger, a former Pawnee High School basketball player, was honored in 2009,

Burkland is an amputee who competes on the Team USA sitting volleyball team. FYI, sitting volleyball isn’t a wheelchair sport. Competitors scoot on their bottoms and use their hands and elbows to navigate a court with a lower-than-usual net.

Burkland was an All-State softball player in high school and lost a foot when it got mashed between forklifts at a summer job. She missed competition and discovered sitting volleyball on a brochure while shopping for a prosthetic.

In a Tulsa World story about Burkland published in December, she said sitting volleyball is the hardest thing she ever tried and it is, literally, a pain in the butt. She said her rear once got so sore that she couldn't lie down or sit without hurting.

"And then your hands hurt from getting blisters on them," she said. "Once they heal, if you haven't been practicing for a while, then you just get them again. You've got to make sure you keep using your hands so your callouses stay. Like, right now, after (a holiday) break when I go back to practice, I will probably get blisters again."

Asked if it was all worth it, Burkland said, “Oh yeah. I love it.”

Plainview generated two athletes in 2008 whose hands are getting a significant amount of work now.



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Tulsa World sports writer Jimmie Tramel is a former class president at Locust Grove High School. He graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern State University with a journalism degree and, while attending college, was sports editor of the Pryor Daily Times. He joined the Tulsa World on Oct. 17, 1989, the same day an earthquake struck the World Series. He is the OSU basketball beat writer and a columnist and feature writer during football season. In 2007, he wrote a book about Oklahoma State football with former Cowboy coach Pat Jones.

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