After graduating on June 11 from Missisquoi Valley Union High School, he’s headed to Southern New Hampshire University in the fall, where he plans to major in business management and, of course, try out for the basketball team. I want to be the person that inspires others to be great as well,” says Gabe, keeping his younger siblings - brother Maliki, sister Shanneal, and his youngest brother JavannDrey - foremost in mind. “I want to show people that the sky’s the limit. That inspiration for personal growth led Gabe to dream of being the first in his family to go to college. To be better than the Gabe I was the day before.” And I thought: ‘Why can’t I do the same thing for myself?’ Not necessarily to be better than everyone else, but to have the highest expectations for myself. “He’s had such big expectations put on him since he was 16. “I remember watching his story,” Gabe recalls. The basketball world provided Gabe with an influential role model: LeBron James, who also grew up with a very young single mother and had a challenging childhood. He was captain this past year and was always interested in helping out and improving the team.” He showed up early, stayed late, never missed a thing. “I had heard about his difficult life, but you’d never know it,” says Walker. Gabe’s high school basketball coach, Matt Walker, says he enjoyed watching Gabe grow into a leader over the years. It’s that feeling of knowing you’re capable of doing things when others might not believe in you.” “Ever since then, basketball has given me confidence. I was a tall kid, taller than the rest, and I could run fast, so the coach was like, ‘Get that boy on the court!’” Gabe recalls with a grin. “It’s been a part of my life since the third grade. “Growing up, I didn’t really have a voice,” he remembers. It marked a major turning point for Gabe, who finally felt like he had the space to define his own dreams.

The family moved to a bigger place when Gabe turned 16, which allowed him to have his own room. I was appreciative and glad that I was with my family.” We didn’t go to other people’s houses, so I didn’t really get to see how other people lived. Now I realize that we were just scraping by, but at the time I didn’t see it as a rough childhood. “My mother worked so hard to raise five children all on her own,” Gabe says. Their mom, who was busy working three jobs to support the family, wasn’t home much. The second child born to a teenage mother before her 18 th birthday, Gabe spent his childhood and early teen years living in a two-bedroom trailer in Highgate, where he and his older sister mostly raised their three younger siblings.

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