31 July 2023
LAWRENCE (KSNT) – Gabbie and Sophie Dawe are sisters on the KU soccer team. Despite practicing together their whole lives, the 2023-24 season will be the first time the two share the pitch.
“We’ve always trained together, but we’ve always missed each other by a year,” Gabbie said.
With a five-year age gap, the two were never able to play on the same high school or club team.
“We would always make the joke like oh what if she got held back and we could play together,” Sophie said.
The two didn’t think it would be possible, but when Gabbie decided to use her fifth-year redshirt, it became a possibility.
Sophie would travel with Gabbie on recruiting visits when Sophie was in middle school and Gabbie was in high school. The first trip to Lawrence stuck with Sophie.
“Everything [stuck out],” Sophie said. “The coaches, the culture, it was really, I don’t know, I thought when I’d go on other visits it would be the same, but honestly it’s way different.”
Once they got to campus, the sisters saw all the good things Lawrence had to offer. The only reason Gabbie ever checked out the Jayhawks, however, was with some help from an ancestor.
“Our great-great-grandfather invented basketball, James Naismith,” Gabbie said.
Yes – the man who created basketball and the powerhouse of Jayhawks hoops – has lineage to this soccer family.
“I didn’t realize how big of a deal it was until I came here. There’s that statue of him, the rules of basketball, there’s the street named after him. ‘Oh, this is a really big deal,'” Gabbie said.
The sisters, born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, never knew the scope of importance of their family.
“You’d mention the name and they’d say, ‘Who’s that?’ Then you come here, and there’s stuff named after him,” Sophie said.
Now in Lawrence, the two will get one season together. Like a true sister relationship, Gabbie kept it real about younger sis.
“She’s my little sister of course she annoys me,” Gabbie said with a laugh.
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