Olympic rower Hendershot has ties to Marblehead

These days, Sara Hendershot is about as far away from Marblehead as you can get. She is in London, a few days away from rowing on the US team in the Summer Olympics. Yet the 24-year-old Hendershot grew up in Marblehead and spent 13 years there before her family moved to West Simsbury, Conn.”We do still have a soft spot in our heart for our friends in Marblehead and Swampscott,” Hendershot’s mother, Marian, said on Tuesday while getting ready to fly out to London this morning. “We’re happy to represent both Massachusetts and Connecticut.”Hendershot, a 2010 Princeton graduate, will compete in the women’s pair with teammate Sarah Zelenka of Illinois. The event debuted in the 1976 Olympics. Georgeta Andrunache and Viorica Susanu of Romania won women’s pair in Beijing four years ago. They also set the current world record of 6:53.80, at Seville, Spain, in 2002.For the London Games, the women’s pair will begin on Saturday ? and Hendershot and Zelenka couldn’t have asked for a more exciting way to qualify for their national team.At the trials, on Lake Mercer, N.J., on June 14, they overcame a distance of over two boat lengths, according to Marian Hendershot, who added, “In rowing, that’s a very huge amount of distance,” and praised the “true amount of determination and drive” of her daughter and Zelenka in prevailing.In fact, the duo won by three seconds – “a lot,” Marian Hendershot said, and “a testament to how good (they were).” She added that the rowers who finished second had previously set a world record in the World Cup in Europe, and were members of the US gold-medal-winning women’s eight team.One of the Hendershots’ former neighbors in Marblehead, Diane Glavin, has fond memories of the future Olympian and her family.”They’re a wonderful, wonderful family,” said Glavin, who recalled living across the street on May Street when the Hendershots arrived (“We became friends from day one”) and staying connected when they moved several streets over.While Glavin said that “we kind of lost touch” since the Marblehead days, she did add, “We followed her in crew at Princeton. This is the exciting part.”The Glavins actually have a connection of sorts to Marblehead’s other Olympian, Shalane Flanagan, who will run the women’s marathon for the US on Aug. 5. Glavin’s daughter went to school with Flanagan’s sister Maggie. Glavin said she wants Marbleheaders already familiar with Flanagan’s achievements to also know that “there is another Marbleheader, a local, competing in the Olympics.”So, starting this weekend, Marblehead residents will be able to cheer on a rower as well as a runner.Rich Tenorio can be reached at [email protected].