Gabby Reece
| Gabrielle Reece | |
|---|---|
| Born |
January 6, 1970 La Jolla, San Diego, California, U.S. |
| Other names | "Gabby" |
| Occupation | Volleyball player, fashion model, television celebrity |
| Height | 6 ft 3 in (1.91 m) |
| Weight | 170 lb (77 kg; 12 st) |
| Spouse(s) | Laird Hamilton (m. 1997) |
| Children | Reece Viola Hamilton (b. 2003) Brody Jo Hamilton (b. 2008) |
Gabrielle Allyse Reece (born January 6, 1970) is an American professional volleyball player, sports announcer, fashion model and actress.
Reece was born in La Jolla, California, and raised in Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. An only child of Terry Glynn and Robert Eduardo Reece. Her father, who was Afro-Trinidadian, was killed in a plane crash when Gabrielle was five. She returned to the U.S. mainland for the eleventh grade, attending Keswick Christian School in St. Petersburg, Florida, when she took up sports. She accepted a volleyball scholarship from Florida State University, where she majored in communications, and in volleyball she led the league in kills four times and blocks once. Reece also set two school volleyball records, in solo blocks (240) and total blocks (747), both of which still stand. In 1989, she moved to New York City to pursue more rigorously a parallel career as a sports fashion model and also continue in her pro volleyball career. Florida State University inducted Reece into the Florida State University Athletics Hall of Fame in 1997.
After graduation, Reece played on professional volleyball tours for several years. That year, Reece's 4-person team took first place at the first-ever Beach Volleyball World Championships staged at the UCLA Tennis Center, in her fifth season as a team captain in the 4-person Women's Beach Volleyball League (WBVL), and fourth captaining Team Nike, which shared League Co-Championship.
For four consecutive years, Reece was the WBVL kills leader from 1993–1996. She was named the Offensive Player of the Year in 1994–95, and the League blocks leader in 1993. She also competed domestically in the 1999–2000 Olympic Challenge Series, the 1999–2000 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour, and other competitions.
Reece trained in golf for four years hoping to make it onto the LPGA but was unsuccessful. In 2009, she said, "... with young children, I simply didn't have the time for such a demanding game".
Reece began her modeling career while attending FSU. In 1989 she was named by Elle as one of the five most beautiful women in the world. She appeared in several Elle layouts in the late 1980s and early 1990s. She has appeared on the covers of Outside, Shape, Women's Sports & Fitness, Elle, and Life. She appeared on the cover of Playboy, with an accompanying nude pictorial, in January 2001. Reece had previously made a cameo appearance as herself on the HBO series Arliss in which she angrily reprimanded her agent for even suggesting she accept an offer to pose nude for Playboy.
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