Anna Goodale doesn’t get back to Maine often these days. But this is one event she was not going to miss.

Goodale, the Olympic gold-medal winning rower from Camden, is among nine individuals being inducted Sunday into the Maine Sports Hall of Fame in a noon ceremony at the Augusta Civic Center. It is the hall’s 40th annual dinner and induction ceremony.

“This is one of the few times I will have a chance to get back,” said Goodale, who retired from rowing in 2010 but is completing her first year as an assistant rowing coach at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. “Maine will always have an amazingly special place in my heart. I have this tradition that when I cross the New Hampshire-Maine line, I roll down the (car) window. I swear the air smells differently.”

Goodale was a member of the U.S. women’s eight crew that won the gold medal in the 2008 Olympics. She was also a member of four world championship crews.

Goodale was home-schooled until she reached high school, then attended Camden-Rockport High. There, she played soccer and basketball. She wasn’t introduced to rowing until the first day of her freshman year at Syracuse, where she became an All-America rower.

She retired after the 2010 world championships, but last year took a job at Gonzaga as an assistant coach. She and her boyfriend, Wes Walker, live in Spokane and have a 2-year-old son, Avery.

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“It’s helped me reconnect with rowing again,” Goodale said of coaching. “Right now I’m just trying to translate muscle memory into words so I can teach the next generation of rowers. Rowing has done so much for me in my life, and staying part of the rowing community was important to me. And by coaching, it has made me appreciate the impact coaches had on me.”

Goodale, 32, said this induction is very special to her.

“It’s an absolute honor, this is an amazing group to be recognized with,” she said. “It is an amazing thing to do something amazing, and to have someone years later recognize it means an awful lot.”

The other inductees are benefactor William Alfond of Dexter and Waterville, sports agent Peter Carlisle of South Portland, football player Glenn Dumont of Winslow, soccer player Roger Levesque of Falmouth, track All-American Rob Pendergist of Ellsworth, basketball player Marcie Lane Schulenberg of Augusta, hockey player Eric Weinrich of Yarmouth and Gardiner, and track standout Amy Winchester of Brewer.

“I’m very familiar with this event and what it means,” said Carlisle, who counts Olympic gold medalists Michael Phelps and Seth Wescott among his clients. “It’s an honor I wouldn’t have expected. I love Maine and have gotten a lot out of sports, both for pleasure and through business. This means a lot to me.”

Five high school scholar-athletes will each receive a $5,000 scholarship. They are Caleb Abbott of Freeport, Kevin Barrett of Thornton Academy, Caleb Gauvin of Mountain Valley, Lydia Roy of Waterville and Kathryn Taylor of Noble.


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