Norm Chow apologized before taking the podium at the HMSA Kaimana Awards program on Saturday.

"You were there two weeks ago," said the University of Hawaii football coach, referring to the HHSAA Hall of Honor event. "Sorry, you’re going to hear the same speech."

It didn’t turn out quite that way. Once again, Chow deftly tweaked his message here and there for a slightly different audience. One of the appropriate changes acknowledged that 17 of Saturday’s 22 honorees were females.

"These young women and men …"

Now, how many times have you heard a football coach — or anyone — say those words in that order? It was a first for me.

Not that I’m surprised; Chow, after all, possesses a doctoral degree in education. He is an enlightened person in an enlightened age, where girls playing sports has become such an everyday part of life they can dominate a scholarship competition based primarily on athletics. And that’s the HHSAA Hall of Honor I’m speaking of now; it has had years where more girls than boys comprise the 12 honorees, including the past two classes of inductees.

AS FOR THE Kaimana Awards, this year girls swept the five top scholarship awards. It wasn’t just because they were good in sports.

Athletics is only one-third of the equation. Even if you follow high school sports in Hawaii fairly closely, you probably haven’t heard of some of the honorees. That’s because they’re also judged heavily on academics and community service.

"I feel that because it includes three different areas it means more than a scholarship that recognizes just one," said Erin Carvalho, a distinguished award honoree who, despite stellar work in the classroom throughout high school, did not receive a purely academic scholarship.

Carvalho, of Hilo, worked hard in grinder sports at Kamehameha-Hawaii: swimming, cross country and distance events in track. She improved steadily in cross country and became her team’s No. 1 runner.

She was also near the top of her class academically, with a 3.998 grade-point average. What kept her from a 4.0 seems barely fair — an A- in health as a freshman, and an A- in an advanced placement class.

But Carvalho isn’t one to complain about life being unfair — although she would have every right to do so. Her steady and spectacular accomplishments are despite losing her mother, Emily, to pancreatic cancer when Erin was 14 and getting ready to enter high school.

"At first I struggled with it," Erin said. "My mom always expected a lot of out of me in school, but my dad (Craig) took over that role."

She also credits Auli’i Nahulu-Kirsch, her middle school art teacher, who became her female role model. "She also lost her mother to cancer, so she has a lot of empathy," said Carvalho, who also aspires to become a teacher.

You can learn more about the distinguished award winners on Sunrise on Hawaii News Now as Penina Lima (Kapolei), Charisse Manley (Molokai), Carvalho, Cheyenne Pico (Hana) and Lauren Claypoole (Island) will be profiled daily, beginning today.

A complete list of the 2012 Kaimana Award winners appears on C8.

Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783.