The Kamehameha Schools Hawaii campus and alumni community are grieving the untimely passing of one of their own, a 24-year-old Maui firefighter who died Saturday after being swept into a storm drain and out to sea during a flash flood in late January.
Tre Evans-Dumaran, a 2016 graduate of the private Keaau school who excelled in both football and track, left his mark on the school’s community during his time there.
“I lucked out; I got to coach him in both sports,” said Manly Kanoa III, a teacher and coach at KSH.
“He was a tough kid. He was not the biggest. For a speedster, he really looked like it,” Kanoa said Tuesday. “For a hurdler, you expect them to look a little bigger, a little stronger, but he was on the lighter side for as fast as he was. But he had a lot of grit.”
According to Kanoa, it was in Evans-Dumaran’s nature to want to help others, and being a firefighter was a natural fit for him.
“I’m really not surprised he ended up a hero,” the coach said.
In a Monday morning email, Lehua Veincent, Kamehameha High School’s principal, expressed aloha to Evans-Dumaran’s ‘ohana, classmates and friends.
“We honor Tre’s service to others as a firefighter on Maui,” Veincent said. “We remember Tre, who manifested aloha and pono in all that he did while a student here and beyond high school. As an outstanding athlete and an excellent student of Kamehameha Schools Hawaii, may Tre remain paa in our naau (held in our hearts) and etched in our memories for years to come as he was respected by many.”
Evidence of the young man’s academic excellence was his selection as a Wayne “Big Dog” Joseph Scholarship awardee in 2016. Winners for the scholarship — which was named after the late Waiakea High School teacher and running coach who authored the Tribune-Herald sports column “Running with the Big Dog” — were required to have a 3.5 or better grade-point average and exemplify excellence in running, volunteerism and overall citizenship.
Evans-Dumaran earned the respect of then Tribune-Herald sports editor Matt Gerhart. Evans-Dumaran’s exploits as a Warriors track-and-field athlete earned him the newspaper’s Athlete of the Week award twice — in the second week of May 2015 and for the first week of April 2016.
In honoring Evans-Dumaran in 2015, Gerhart wrote: “Kamehameha’s Tre Evans-Dumaran had reason to feel slighted during the regular season as the Tribune-Herald elected to highlight the accomplishments of other athletes over his own. … “No matter, Evans-Dumaran was not to be denied in this space.
“Saturday’s BIIF track and field championships produced no shortage of Athlete of the Week nominees, but Evans-Dumaran rose above by winning four events — the 100 and 200 dashes along with both hurdles. His win in the 110 hurdles (14.86 seconds) was a meet record.”
Evans-Dumaran, who finished sixth in the state in the 110-meter hurdles as a sophomore, didn’t finish the finals heat as a junior at states because he and another competitor became entangled and fell.
As a senior, however, Evans-Dumaran took the state title in that event at Kamehameha Schools Kapalama campus on Oahu in a blazing 14.75 seconds.
“What a lot of people don’t realize with that state championship is that he took a spill earlier in the season. It was a week before, in fact, at our league championships,” Kanoa said. “He hurt his shoulder. It was really bad, and we were wondering if he was going to be able to make it to states to compete.
“… What he did was, in the starting blocks, instead of two hands down, he scooted his hand to the middle, and he went in a three-point stance —and he won with one arm.
“It was a truly heroic effort.”
Kanoa said Evans-Dumaran “always had a smile and worked hard, even though he had natural skill.”
“He made others want to work harder,” he said. “So, we were the ones who were truly blessed to have him in our program.”
Evans-Dumaran’s final struggle for life and his death in the line of duty have become national news, and a GoFundMe online fundraiser set up by his mother, Chelsie Evans, titled “Tre Evans-Dumaran’s fight of his life,” had raised almost $138,000 by Tuesday afternoon.
In a Sunday update on the GoFundMe page on Sunday, a grieving Evans bared her soul.
“OK Lord. I hear you loud and clear,” she wrote. “Your plan. No negotiations. No plea agreements. Your plan. Your plan was put in to place when I told Tre it was OK to go. That I will carry the pain of missing him for the rest of my life if it meant no more pain, no more suffering, when I realized my negotiations with you were no good. But Lord, hear me. You created THE most amazing soul and you gifted him to a teenage girl not ready to be a mom, but I took you up for the challenge. I loved that gift more than I knew a 15-year-old’s heart could bear. I did my very best, although imperfect, to care for this beautiful gift with my whole being.”
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.