Gabby Reece

When Women’s Sports & Fitness named Gabby one of the ‘20 Most Influential Women in Sports’ (August 1997) someone asked why they picked Gabby for the issue’s cover, and the magazine’s editor wrote, “Because I believe she represents, finally, the answer to all the image-questing pendulum swinging of the decades gone by.

Who is the female athlete? She is everything once thought to be an inherent contradiction. She is strong and beautiful, sweaty and feminine, tough and ladylike.” 

She has regularly appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, the Ellen Degeneres Show, and Chelsea Lately, as well as other top-tier entertainment shows. She has also appeared in several feature films, where she played a pro beach volleyball player in ‘Cloud Nine’ with Bert Reynolds (2004), a guest star in ‘North Shore’ (2004), and as a physical trainer in the film ‘Gattica’ (1997).

A charismatic speaker, in the spring of 2012, Gabby was invited to Washington, DC to speak at the annual TEDMED conference on innovations in health and medicine. Gabby also has an ongoing relationship with the American Heart Association Teaching Gardens, an initiative benefitting needy schools through the planting of organic gardens, by which she speaks to children about the importance of eating healthy and regular exercise.

Gabby began modeling in high school and throughout her college career. She traveled to New York and Italy in between competing and training. She was only a sophomore at Florida State University when Elle named her “One of The Five Most Beautiful Women in The World”.

She has graced the cover of Sports Illustrated for Women, Travel & Leisure Golf, Women’s Sports & Fitness, Outside, Elle, Shape, Self, Harpers’ Bazaar, Volleyball, Fitness, Life, Vogue, Experience Life, and People, and has worked with the most elite photographers in the world.

Gabby won an athletic scholarship to Florida State University for indoor volleyball where she played two seasons before accepting offers from the modeling world. Despite the demand of modeling and competing, Gabby set two school volleyball records for FSU that still stand today.

A Florida State star turned pro, Gabby trained hard to hone her skills in 2-person beach volleyball and competed domestically in the 1999-2000 Olympic 4 on 4 Challenge Series and the 1999-2000 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour.

In 1997, competing with the best global beach volleyball players ever assembled, Gabby’s 4-person team took first place at the first-ever Beach Volleyball World Championships. 1997 was Gabby’s fifth season as team captain in the 4-person Women’s Beach Volleyball League (WBVL), and her fourth captaining Team Nike.

Named the Offensive Player of the Year in 1994-95 and WBVL blocks leader, Gabby led the WBVL in kills four straight years in a row from 1993-1996.

In 1994 Gabby became Nike’s first female athlete to design a shoe, and Nike’s first-ever female cross-training spokesperson.

Working with Tinker Hatfield, designer of the Air Jordan, Nike first launched Gabby’s shoe the Air Trainer, then the Air Patrol in 1995, the Air GR in 1997 and the Air GR II in 1998, and her shoe eventually became the first women’s shoe to outsell the Air Jordan.