From basketball to business: Remaining player from Lady Panthers 'dream team' graduates with honors

Buer

MILWAUKEE—As Rebecca Buer flies out to Washington , D.C. and Los Angeles attending job interviews this month, she realizes just how competitive the employment search can be. But Buer knows a thing or two about competition.

In the fall of 2000, fresh off the Mukwonago High School hoops team, Buer became a guard for the women’s basketball team at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM). By season’s end the Lady Panthers, under head coach Sandy Botham, had finished with a 19-11 record, cinched their first-ever trip to the NCAA Tournament, and infused UWM fever all around Wisconsin.

It was a euphoric way to begin college, remembers No. 4. “Sports can teach you a lot about life,” she says. “Not just about competition, but also things like time management and prioritizing.”

Buer is the last member of that dream team still enrolled at UWM to graduate, though she didn’t play during her junior and senior years in order to focus on other career aspirations.

“I always wanted to play college basketball, even as a little girl,” she says. “Few people can say they’ve done that. But for anyone who really loves basketball, they know Cameron Indoor Stadium (at Duke University) is the place to be. When we got to Duke, it was really hard to take it all in.”

Buer says she also will treasure the makeshift “trophy” she received for being named Most Inspirational Player in 2001. The award, actually a Cabbage Patch doll, had rotated among the players all season for various individual accomplishments. After every game, a player possessing it would add a trinket before it was bestowed upon someone else. At the end of the year, the doll award, replete with all of its embellishments, went to the player that Botham felt showed the most heart and hustle rather than the most skill.

Winning it meant a lot to Buer, who now remembers each of her teammates just by looking at the doll.

“There was such chemistry among us, I think we knew we had the potential of finishing as well as we did,” she recalls. “Making the tournament was the cherry on the cake for us. And the fact that we were the first team to do it at UWM made it even that more exciting.”

Buer also was recognized for her academic achievement while playing with the Panthers. With a double major in marketing and international business, Buer will graduate with honors this weekend. She hopes to eventually make a career working for an international company.

To prepare, she traveled abroad last year to study in Seville, Spain , where she honed her Spanish and took business and economics courses at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide.

Despite all of her cherished times at UWM, Buer says it comes down to the people she befriended here that she will miss most. “I love this campus because it’s where I made so many friendships that are important to me.”

UWM’s Winter Commencement Ceremony is at 1 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 19, at the U.S. Cellular Arena, 400 W. Kilbourn Ave. Expected to participate are 1,210 bachelor’s degree candidates, 635 master’s degree candidates, and 82 doctoral degree candidates.

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