Four Hawaii ocean sports stars — surfers Carissa Moore and Shane Dorian, paddler Kelly Fey and distance swimmer Mike Spalding — were inducted Thursday night into the Hawai‘i Waterman Hall of Fame in an awards ceremony at the Outrigger Canoe Club.
“It was just amazing, there was so much emotion and synergy,” Bill Pratt, award co-founder and chairman, said of the event Friday in a phone interview. “Hawaii’s watermen and waterwomen are the greatest in the world, but they also share a uniquely Hawaiian humility and real sense of ohana,” Pratt said.
The award honors kamaaina who perpetuate the spirit of Duke Kahanamoku, the islands’ five-time Olympic swimming medalist known as Hawaii’s ambassador of aloha, who posthumously headed the first class of Hawai‘i Waterman Hall of Fame honorees.
“These athletes are very much in the same vein as Duke, 130 years later,” Pratt said. “They care about their athletic prowess, but they care more about one race: the human race.” Winners are selected for outstanding achievement in their sports and making community contributions.
Michael Spalding is the first and only male swimmer to have swum all nine Hawaiian Island channels. Also an avid bodysurfer, sailor and supporter of traditional Polynesian sailing canoes, Spalding established a scholarship fund for disadvantaged Fijian students and has served on various charitable boards.
Shane Dorian, winner of 10 World Surf Big Wave awards and two Billabong XXL awards, founded the annual Keiki Classic Surf Contest at Banyans. After barely surviving a wipeout at Mavericks in California, he designed a safety wetsuit vest that is now considered standard equipment.
In addition to winning multiple solo-craft Moloka‘i Channel World Championships — in both the kayak and OC-1 — as well as team championships, Kelly Fey has coached paddling. Additionally, Fey helped establish the Kaiwi Coast Run & Walk, has pursued fundraising for rescue tubes at beaches and shorelines, and was involved in placing Kanewai Fishpond under community stewardship.
Pratt praised Carissa Moore, five-time world champion and winner of the first Olympic gold medal for surfing, “not just for her athletic prowess,” but for her foundation in support of girls’ athletic dreams, Moore Aloha. He described her as “a true ambassador of Hawaii, sharing our culture with the world.”
The celebration marked the 11th observance of the annual awards, launched in 2010 by the Outrigger Duke Kahanamoku Foundation, which receives net proceeds from the benefit dinner and disburses them through its college scholarships and athletic grants program; it has given away more than $3 million since it began in 1986.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Kelly Fey’s first name.
