Hall pass: Gabbie Ewing

It’s hard to boil Gabbie Ewing‘s contribution to Hawaii Prep athletics by mere numbers.

As a soccer player, she controls the middle and isn’t asked to put up obscene goal totals like Leo Klink and Sonest Furtado did. On the volleyball court, she wasn’t the type of player to rise above the net and drop bombs like Tiyana Hallums or McKenna Granato until she had to be.

But the 16 member Hall of Honor committee had no problem judging intangibles and made her part of this year’s class to be inducted June 7 at Dole Cannery Square’s Pomaikai Ballroom.

Ewing is more about letters than numbers anyway, specifically the letter “W.”

Her Ka Makani soccer teams won two Division II state titles in her four years as a starter and finished second the other two times. Her volleyball mates also made it to a state final with her, but lost.

One place where her numbers flattened everyone was in the state tournament for volleyball, where she put an inexperienced team on her shoulders with coach Sharon Peterson‘s blessing.

In HPA’s first match against Radford, Ewing had 30 of her team’s 39 digs and received the serve 56 times to the rest of her team’s 29. But that was normal.

What wasn’t normal was her offense. Ewing had 69 swings, nearly half of the rest of the team combined. In the second round she ramped it up even further, teeing up 55 of HPA’s 97 attacks but losing to Hawaii Baptist and missing out on an all-tournament team for the first time since her freshman year.

For a girl defined by winning, Peterson considers her performance for that team that fell short all you need to know about her competitive nature.

“In my 40 years of coaching volleyball,” Peterson said. “I have coached hundreds of wonderful and talented girls and young women. There were, however, and continue to be, a few that rise above the rest because of what they bring to a team and a school. Gabbie has achieved this distinction.”

Ewing also lettered in softball and track and field, qualifying for the state meet in three field events and two relays but not making it past the trials in any of them.

She will go on to play soccer at Concordia, and it is the beautiful game that she excels in. She scored in her final two state matches as Ka Makani repeated as champions and was named the tournament’s most outstanding player for the second straight year.

The HHSAA was so impressed by Ewing in her junior year that she was judged the tournament’s most outstanding player even though she didn’t score a goal in the entire tournament.

With her in the middle of things, Hawaii Prep reached the state title match four times.

As Klink and Furtado can attest, athletes who count soccer as their primary sport have a hard time cracking the hall. The last to do so was Kamehameha’s Caprice Dydasco in 2011, although Zhane Santiago and Marcus Mariota went in with her helped by strong soccer resumes.

Hall of Honor Members