Inductees

Sports is full of funny stories, and Yvette Buhlig Pearce has two great ones.

At the state volleyball tournament in 1984, a University of Missouri coach, not knowing she was a freshman, asked Santa Fe High School coach Charlie Bock where Yvette was going to school next year.

“I hope back at Santa Fe!” Bock said, smiling.

A few years later in a basketball game, Pearce drove the lane, only to be surrounded by defenders. With her back to the basket, she did a no-look shot – which swished through the net. Coach Sam Potter could only grin and shake his head.

Certainly, everything seemed to turn to gold for Pearce in the rural Lafayette County community of Alma and at Mizzou. And her success is why the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame proudly inducted her with the Class of 2025.

Who can say they were a three-sport athlete who earned 10 All-State honors? Pearce led the volleyball team to four state championships (1984, 1985, 1986, 1987). She was a three-time All-State basketball selection, scored 1,907 points and was recruited by Missouri State Lady Bears coach Cheryl Burnett (MSHOF Legend 2015). In 1988, she was the state champion in the 110 hurdles and the triple jump, and was selected to the USA Today High School All-American team for Missouri.

At Mizzou from 1988 to 1993, she initially took a one-year medical redshirt but also earned a track letter. In volleyball? Pearce ranked first all-time in kills (1,478), attacks (3,515), points (1,761) and service aces (163) until the early 2000s.

Her 626 points in 1992 remains a single-season record. That year, she earned All-Big 8 Conference and NCAA All-American honors, a spot on the USA Olympic Festival team, Mizzou’s Female Athlete of the Year, the Strength and Conditioning All-American and MVP in all tournaments.

In the past 25 years, she has coached youth volleyball in the Springfield area.

And it all started in a community about an hour each way between Kansas City and Columbia, in a town of 450.

“Santa Fe High School drew students from several surrounding small communities that had no small shortage of young women that knew what hard work was all about,” Pearce said, noting she was among several 6-foot girls athletes.

Pearce played basketball and ran AAU track at an early age while attending a Waverly elementary school 15 minutes away.

“My father, Curtis Buhlig, was the principal at (Santa Fe) high school, and some of my fondest memories as a child was to ride that bus to the high school, get off and shoot baskets with my dad in the afternoon after school. He passed away unexpectedly when I was in the seventh grade,” Pearce said. “Our mother, Ann, raised four children 17 and under by herself. But we had that small community that loved on and invested in us. I threw myself and focused on sports as an outlet and had several key coaches that mentored me during that time.”

As a junior high student at Trinity Lutheran School in Alma, she fell in love with volleyball.

“As a freshman entering the high school volleyball program, a strong culture and winning tradition had been established by robust senior leadership,” Pearce said. “To step up and play as a freshman meant raising the bar, and I thrived in that competitive environment.”

Bock, Potter and track coach Jerry McLean made her a better athlete in so many ways. In track, she set a long jump record of 17 feet, 9 inches.

She credits Mizzou coaches Craig Sherman and Wayne Kreklow for enhancing her skills.

“Playing volleyball at the University of Missouri demanded another step up physically and mentally,” Pearce said. “I was recruited as an outside hitter and finished my career as a middle and right-side slide hitter. My ability to run a slide on the right got me a spot on the Olympic Festival Team in 1990.”

Since then, she called Republic home as she and husband, Matt, raise Logan, Emma and Audrey.

For more than 10 years, Pearce has been co-director of the Missouri Youth Sports League for volleyball, which focuses on development of third- through eighth-graders. She also serves as director of the SW MO Static Volleyball Club.

“One of my favorite quotes is by Toby Morris: ‘There is no such thing as a self-made man. We are made up of thousands of others,’” Pearce said. “Many people have played a part in the athlete I was and person I have become today.”