School Spirit : Former Sunny Hills Students Share Olympic Memories : Reunion: Three athletes recall glory of making team, and the pall of terrorism at the 1972 Games in Munich.

When high school students DeAnne (Wilson) Nicholas, Carolyn Woods and Dana Schroeder-Butler stepped off the airplane at Los Angeles International Airport in September 1972, they obviously were not returning from a high school field trip.

After clearing customs, they were greeted and driven home by then-mayor Robert Root of Fullerton.

When classes resumed at Sunny Hills High School, they were honored by the student body at an assembly. Then, it was off to a luncheon to be saluted by the city’s civic and business leaders.

And, there was still more fanfare when the school’s marching band and cheerleaders joined in the accolades for the trio at a halftime ceremony during a Lancer football game.

It was definitely a big deal for Sunny Hills and the City of Fullerton when Nicholas, Woods and Schroeder-Butler returned home.

Nicholas and Woods, both seniors, and Schroeder-Butler, a junior, competed for the U.S. Olympic team in the 1972 Summer Games in Munich. Nicholas was a high jumper; Woods and Schroeder-Butler were on the women’s swimming team.

Though none received medals, their journey to Munich was a landmark event.

It was the first time three students from the same high school had made the same U.S. Olympic team.

Nicholas, who still lives in Fullerton, Woods of Yorba Linda and Schroeder-Butler of Irvine reminisced recently at Mile Square Park during their first reunion in 20 years.

“I was just in awe,” said Nicholas. “I thought, ‘Wow, you’re really here.’ It was kind of like a dream. I was there but not there.”

Schroeder-Butler, who owns a Newport Beach display lighting business with her husband, Gary, agreed. “It was almost like a dream, like it didn’t really happen.”

But it was a dream that Nicholas, Woods and Schroeder-Butler shared for many years before Munich.

“It’s a dream that every athlete has,” Nicholas said. “It was an incredible feeling. Now 20 years later, I remember everything perfectly.”

What made the dream so improbable, however, was that all three achieved it in the pre-Title IX era, when girls’ athletic programs in the public schools were nowhere near the caliber of today’s.

When girls in the upper-middle class environs at Sunny Hills were allowed to perspire in those days, it was on the tennis court.

“Women didn’t sweat or do things like that (at the time),” Nicholas said. “We had to do it secretly. We lifted weights, but we did it early so no one knew. It was not something we talked about with our social training.”

Said Schroeder-Butler: “It wasn’t cool to have muscles or streamlined bodies. Our non-athletic friends didn’t have the development we had.”

But what the three lacked in social acceptance and school athletic programs, they made up for with desire, motivation and access to the amateur athletic programs that were available.

Carolyn Woods, who is a pediatric nurse at UCI Medical Center in Orange, had been swimming almost since the time she took her first steps as a toddler.

“I started swimming when I was 2 and started competing when I was 4 years old,” she said. “I swam on age-group teams for the Fullerton Aquatics Club. When I was 13, I first made the nationals. It was at the 1968 Olympic trials at the (L.A.) Coliseum that my coach (Hank Vellekamp) told my mother (Betty Lou) that he thought I could make it in four years.”

Woods began pointing toward Munich, but she didn’t pick up the pace until 1971.

“The last year prior to the Olympics was very intense,” she said. “I started placing in the top eight, then top five and the top three in the meets. My times were dropping.”

At the 1972 Winternationals at Washington State, Woods placed fifth in the 200-meter individual medley and made the time standards for the Olympic trials in three other events--the 100- and 200-meter breaststroke and the 400 individual medley.

At the Olympic trials in Chicago, Woods qualified for the U.S. team by finishing second, 0.2 seconds behind eventual bronze medalist Lynn Vidali in the 200 individual medley.

From Chicago, Woods and the other qualifiers were flown to Washington for processing, then to Tennessee for a month of training, back to Washington for a White House dinner and then on to Munich.

DeAnne (Wilson) Nicholas was the first of the Sunny Hills trio to qualify for the Summer Games. She emerged from the trials at Frederick, Md., with a qualifying leap of 5 feet 9 1/4 inches in the high jump.

Nicholas had been running in AAU track and field events since she was 10. She had always dreamed of competing in the Olympics some day, but in 1968, those dreams began taking shape.

“I was picked to help give out awards at the 1968 Olympic trials (at the L.A. Coliseum),” she recalled. “I remember thinking at the time, that it would be really neat receiving an award instead of giving it out. That was the first hint that I’d be going.

“A year before the Olympics, Dave Pearson became my personal coach. There were seven of us on his team, all field-event people. He was a track nut. He had also coached Cathy Schmidt, the American record-holder in the javelin. He put me on the route to be at my peak for the Olympics.”

When news of Nicholas’ qualifying reached Fullerton, Woods and Schroeder vowed that they, too, would qualify at the upcoming swim trials.

“I remember hearing that DeAnne was in contention,” Schroeder said. “We met her at a reception at the Disneyland Hotel when she returned from the trials. I came back from Disneyland thinking, ‘By golly, if she can do it, we can do it, too.’ ”

At 16, Dana Schroeder was the youngest of the three, and she also came the closest to winning a medal. Schroeder placed fifth in the 100 butterfly in Munich with a time of 1:03.98, .25 seconds behind bronze medalist Andrea Gyarmati of Hungary.

Schroeder came from a swimming family. Her older sisters, Randee and Cinda, had preceded her into the pool, but the Olympics came around at just the right time for Dana.

“I followed in my sisters’ footsteps,” Schroeder said. “I was really groomed. Cinda and I were at the same level, but Cinda just missed going to the trials. Her interests were changing. She was a senior and it was harder for her to stay focused, and I was younger and it was easier for me.”

Schroeder began competing in AAU meets when she was 12. At 14, she switched from the Fullerton Aquatic Club to the Lakewood Aquatic Club, which under Coach Jim Montrella, was the closest thing there was to the Mission Viejo Nadadores at the time.

“My parents were incredibly supportive,” Schroeder said. “They would drive me to Lakewood for my 5 a.m. workout and then to Sunny Hills in time for my second-period class. Then my mom would drive me back to Lakewood for my afternoon workout and we’d get home well after dinner hour.”

The sacrifices and perseverance paid off. At the Olympic trials, Schroeder placed third in the 100 butterfly to qualify for a berth.

After further training and processing, the Sunny Hills trio arrived in Munich.

But the Games themselves were eventually forced off center stage by international terrorism.

On Sept. 5, eight hooded members of the Black September organization, a Palestinian terrorist group, burst into the Olympic Village in an attack that left 11 members of the Israeli team and five terrorists dead. Woods and Schroeder were through with their events when the attack occurred, but Nicholas was still competing.

“We were gone all day on a tour (when the terrorists struck),” Woods said. “We were competing in a FINA exhibition about an hour away. We didn’t get back until 10 p.m. The bus stopped outside the village, and we were escorted by soldiers through tunnels and told to stay in our rooms. There were armed guards everywhere.”

Said Nicholas: “They asked us not to leave our rooms, but I had to get to a phone. I had to get in touch with my parents. They were panic-stricken. We were really close to a lot of stuff. There was an arsenal in the tunnels underground.”

Security in the village hadn’t been that strict before the tragedy, the three agreed.

“Steve Furniss (an American swimmer) was really shocked,” Woods said. “He had climbed over that (security) fence just a few hours before (the terrorists) came over.”

Said Schroeder: “At that point, we really wanted to get back to the United States, land and kiss the ground.”

Nicholas went on to finish 18th in the high jump, but none of the three was around for the closing ceremonies, which had been delayed one day by the tragedy.

After years of self-sacrifice, untold hours of training and relentless dedication, dreams of further Olympic competition for the three began to fade.

“I only swam for one more year and begged off,” Schroeder said. “I was really burned out. It would have been nice to have brought home the gold, but it would have been extremely difficult to maintain four more years of enormous discipline. I wanted to get involved in a social life.”

Nicholas continued to compete for two more years on the international circuit. Before she was through, she had been to Germany and Russia three times, plus Italy, Austria and Africa. But she was also growing weary of the grind.

“I decided it was time to party,” Nicholas said. “I started (competing) so young, and I wanted a social life. I went to Fullerton College, where I could decide what I wanted to do, and eventually got married.”

After graduation, Woods competed for two years at the University of Arizona and two more at UC Santa Barbara, where she earned her B.A. in physical education.

“But it was party time,” Woods said in explaining her decision to call it quits.

After coaching in Napa Valley and at Rancho Santiago College and Canyon High School for eight years, Woods discovered she had a new goal.

“I wanted to go back to school and get my master’s degree in psychology,” Woods said. “To get into the medical field, I went into nursing school and the first year, I fell in love with nursing.”

She married Steve Nicholas, a Fullerton physical therapist, in 1979. They have three daughters, Lauren, 17, a stepdaughter who attends Pasadena Poly High School; Sunny, 12, and Stevie, 10, students at Whittier Christian.

About three years ago, she became a walk-on track coach at Sunny Hills.

“My husband was involved with the (Sunny Hills) football team, and I thought it would be neat to try (coaching at) this high school in track,” Nicholas said. “I got to see what I kind of missed. I really enjoy being up there with those kids.”

After two years at Arizona, Schroeder transferred to USC, where her oldest sister had studied dental hygiene. Schroeder followed her sister’s footsteps again and got her degree, but she soon became disillusioned.

“I immediately discovered that dental hygiene wasn’t making me happy,” Schroeder said. “I started taking interior design classes and I liked that a lot more.”

Eventually, Schroeder and her husband, a former Sunny Hills football player whom she married in 1980, quit their jobs, bought a small Newport Beach light fixture company that served tract home builders and watched it grow. In building a successful business, Schroeder, mother of a 3 1/2-year-old son, Kane, has found her Olympic experience helpful.

“Constantly trying to achieve the gold medal gave me an inner confidence that I can rise above the workaholic mentality,” Schroeder said. “I really enjoy my work and enjoy my son.”