It took a divine detour for redshirt senior guard Karly Buer to wind up on Liberty University’s women’s basketball team for her fourth and final season of NCAA Division I eligibility.
“It was a crazy ‘God thing,’ that’s all I can say,” Buer said.
She tore the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in her left knee during a basketball practice her senior year at Missouri State University and received a medical redshirt before graduating with an undergraduate degree in sport and park administration last spring.
“I had another year of eligibility left, and I wanted to go on and get my master’s, so I literally Googled ‘outdoor adventure sport grad programs’ and Liberty University was the first to pop up,” Buer said.
She was accepted into Liberty’s sport management master’s degree program and made plans to enroll online with or without a basketball scholarship.
“Outdoor adventure is more of my passion, so whenever I have a day off, you can usually find me in the mountains instead of in the gym,” said Buer.
Then she received a call from Liberty’s women’s basketball Head Coach Carey Green.
“When I told him I had already been accepted and was coming here regardless of basketball, he offered me a scholarship over the phone,” she said. “It was just a blessing, and I realized it instantly, so I was quick to say, ‘Yes.’”
Green was glad she did, as Buer went on to rank second in scoring and steals and third in assists, leading the Lady Flames (26-7, 19-1 Big South Conference) to their 16th NCAA Tournament appearance in the past 19 seasons. Buer scored 14 points against the University of North Carolina, where Liberty’s 14-game winning streak was snapped in a 71-65 loss.
Green said that the risk-taking personality Buer exhibits outdoors is evident in her playing style on the basketball court.
“She’s always adventurous with the basketball in her hands and in her approach to life,” Green said. “If she’s going on a hiking trail she’s never been on before, or on a dribble drive between defenders to the basket, she has the same aggressive nature. She knows what she wants, and she’s very diligent and persistent.”
She and her coach are kindred spirits.
“Coach Green is an outdoorsman himself,” Buer said. “He loves hunting and fishing.”
But it’s her parents, Marcy and Kent, she has to thank for her love of the outdoors and adventurous nature.
“Every vacation that I can remember, since I was little, has been outdoors in the national parks or on a ski slope,” she said. “Skiing’s probably my favorite thing to do, but I’m from Kansas so I just don’t get the opportunity to go as much as I’d like. I love mountain biking and just hiking and backpacking and camping.”
A summer vacation in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee created one of her most vivid childhood memories.
“I was really young, maybe only about 8 years old, and we had backpacks on and hiked 8 miles up to our cabin. There was no running water or electricity, just a shack up on top of the mountain,” Buer said. “It was so surreal, waking up and watching the sunrise and then going back and watching the sunsets as a family. That was what really kind of sealed my love of nature.”
Her passion perfectly fits her ambition to become an adventure therapist.
“Adventure therapy is a relatively new industry, but the concept has been around for years,” Buer said. “It’s just getting people out in the woods, letting them experience nature and kind of cleanse their soul and … change the way they think about themselves and about the world.”
Never does she feel closer to God than when she is out experiencing His amazing creation, she said.
“That’s almost like my sanctuary, being out in the woods. I just feel closest to Him there,” Buer said. “If you take the time to pause and reflect and let the fresh air just come through your soul, you can sense the beauty all around in God’s creation. He’s made all of it. And then you realize, ‘Wait, God also made me.’ The beauty I’m seeing, that’s also the beauty inside my soul; that’s what’s also inside of us.”
