They Made Their Mark in The Year That Was : MOTHER NATURE : January Temblor Impacted Athletes at All Age Levels : Coping: The fortunes of individuals and teams shifted along with everything else.

Remember the old line? “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature. . . .” Boom.

Tick her off and risk her wrath of lightning bolts, claps of thunder and torrential downpours.

Funny stuff when it’s make-believe and part of a margarine commercial.

Not so hilarious when she decides to make the earth move for real.

When the ground shook ever so violently in the early morning hours of Jan. 17, the fortunes of several Valley-area athletes and teams shifted along with everything else.

Gymnasiums cracked and crumbled. School athletic teams were displaced at midseason. While state and federal officials tabulated monetary damage, an even greater human toll was taken.

Fifty-seven people died, including 16 in the Northridge Meadows apartments.

Amy Windmiller and Shannon Jones, two star softball players from Cal State Northridge, lived on the first floor of those apartments. Both managed to flee only seconds before the ceiling of their home collapsed.

Some said the Northridge men’s basketball team was lucky. The Matadors were in Boulder, Colo., resting for a game later that night against Colorado.

The players and coaches certainly didn’t feel fortunate as they helplessly watched television accounts of the damage in their community between frantic phone calls to friends and family.

They played spiritedly that night and lost, voting afterward to return home immediately and forgo a game against Air Force scheduled for the same trip.

“Our bodies were in Colorado, but our hearts and minds were at Northridge,” said Peter Micelli, Northridge’s center.

Northridge athletes, most of them already separated from their families and now homeless, seemed hardest hit. Those with homes still standing became hosts for entire teams.

Despite a series of nerve-racking aftershocks, no team stopped competing for long.

Games were rescheduled or moved to alternative sites. The Alemany High girls’ team, which lost its gym, won a Southern Section championship after playing its season on the road. Windmiller and Jones both had banner seasons, helping their team advance as far as the NCAA title game.

In February, boys who later would form the media-darling Earthquake Kids started to practice for the upcoming Little League season.

Almost a year later, Mother Nature’s legacy remains.

“It’s tough to recruit,” one Northridge coach said this fall, “when your campus looks like a big trailer park.”

VALLEY SPORTS TOP 10 STORIES OF 1994: C14