Go back 28 years to the Olympics in Los Angeles.

The Soviet Union — returning the favor for the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Games (over occupation of Afghanistan) — missed the fun.

The Americans dominated the medal count as Mary Lou Retton, Michael Jordan, Evander Holyfield and Carl Lewis emerged as household names.

Only 6,800 athletes worldwide were good enough to earn the privilege to represent their countries. The U.S. had just over 500 competitors in 25 sports.

Those athletes came from Anchorage, Alaska, to the Florida Keys. States like California and Texas were home to more than 130 members of the team.

Five states sent two or fewer athletes to L.A. that year.

Davis High School — the Classes of 1975 and 1977, specifically — sent three athletes to the Games in 1984. All medaled: gold, silver and bronze.

“What are the odds?” American water polo goalie and former Blue Devil Craig Wilson told me this week. He competed in those Olympics, along with Denise Curry in basketball and Marcy Place in field hockey. They represented the local blue and white while adding red on their national uniforms.

Wilson doubts if that has ever occurred at a similar-size school. (DHS had about 1,200 students in 1977 because it went to a four-year school while Emerson Junior High was being built.)

“And we were all in school at the same time,” adds Wilson, a 1975 DHS grad.

Curry, who many believe (me included) was one of the athletes who changed the face of women’s athletics in America, had led the Blue Devils to the Sac-Joaquin Section’s first two girls basketball championships and later became the all-time leading scorer (men and women) at UCLA — an honor she holds to this day.

Curry, like Wilson and Place, was disappointed by the false start of 1980.

“I have a lot more perspective on it now,” she said by telephone from her Orange County home. “We made the 1980 team and we were set to go to Moscow before President Carter told us no. We felt bad not only for ourselves, but for the whole U.S. delegation.

“Four years later we actually got to participate … in Los Angeles, on American soil. There was a prideful feeling in that and we were ready.”

Both women and men won Olympic basketball gold — one team featuring Jordan and Patrick Ewing, the other Curry and USC’s Cheryl Miller.

Wilson, who had been a brick wall in goal when UC Santa Barbara won the national water polo title in 1979, helped the U.S. to a surprising second-place finish, losing to then-Yugoslavia in the finals.

Meanwhile, Place — who, like Curry, played just about every sport offered at Davis High — was helping her long-shot American field hockey squad earn a bronze medal.

Curry and Place (both ’77 DHS grads) remember not getting much of a chance to talk because their events were in venues far removed from each other. Curry and Wilson never spoke in L.A. because water polo was in Malibu and basketball was downtown.

So what is everyone up to these days?

Wilson is a technology consultant for Amerisource Bergen, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical services companies.

He and his Gaucho national-crown buddies still play together as a formidable international water polo crew. Wilson’s team recently won the 55-and-over-division gold medal in Riccione, Italy.

Curry, once the head women’s basketball coach at Cal State Fullerton and a longtime assistant at Long Beach State, hopes to have an announcement soon about her return to coaching. She works in a family business in Southern California and is much sought-after as a speaker.

Place and Curry reunited briefly last November when a reunion of the 1975-76 Blue Devil girls basketball champions was held at The Cage on campus at DHS.

“That was a lot of fun to catch up with everybody,” Curry said.

Place, a senior vice president with Cornish & Carey Commercial Newmark Knight Frank, lives in Orinda with her family. She is a research and development and commercial leasing specialist with the independent real estate firm.

After graduation from high school, as expected, Place went on to star in field hockey at Cal (where she earned an honors degree in economics). She played in a second Olympics (1988 in Seoul), but the United States did not medal.

Wilson and Curry are both members of the DHS Blue & White Foundation Hall of Fame and are in the national shrines for their respective sports.

“In my opinion — and very likely shared by the water polo community in the United States — Craig is the greatest goalie in U.S. water polo history,” veteran Blue Devil water polo coach Tracy Stapleton believes. “(He) changed the game with his accurate, deep-strike passing to lead the counter attack.”

Wilson has attended Blue Devil practices over the years and regularly visits family and friends in Davis.

“It was a real treat for members of the DHS team to (be) table-servers at the Hall of Fame dinner a few years ago when Craig was inducted,” Stapleton continues. “He spoke with all of the guys, the parents, posed for pictures, signed autographs. He’s a great guy.”

Curry has her gold medal locked in a safety-deposit box, but it doesn’t gather dust. It comes with her when she’s asked to speak or work with schoolchildren.

“It is all pretty heady stuff,” Curry says, looking back. “I still love (the Olympics). I just finished watching a rebroadcast of the Japan/Canada soccer game (Wednesday evening), but my heart is a little more with basketball.

“I’ll tell you what, though … I am really proud to have grown up in Davis and have been on those high school teams and played with those girls and been coached by the people I was.”

Remembers Wilson, “There is no better thrill and honor to play in your home country’s hosted games. It was well-run, well-attended, not to mention the USA teams fared extremely well.”

Thank you, Blue Devils.

While I Have You Here: Rick West, Wilson’s high school coach, remains a Davis resident. Curry’s two Devil hardcourt coaches — George Fleming (Woodland) and Barbara Iten (Dixon) — still live in the area.

Wilson also played in the 1988 and 1992 Olympics. He again earned a silver medal in Seoul and was the oldest water polo player in the competition (35) in Barcelona, Spain — where the U.S. did not medal.

— Bruce Gallaudet is a staff writer for The Davis Enterprise. Reach him at [email protected] or (530) 747-8047.

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