With USA athletes earning a record number of medals in the 2016 Summer Olympics, the AHSAA thought it was time to highlight Anaheim High’s own Olympic athletes.
Anaheim High’s legendary swim and water polo coach Jon Urbanchek, himself an Olympic swimmer, is in Rio now as a special assistant coach for the U.S. Olympic Swimming Team, a position he also held in 2012.
He was head coach to the 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008 Olympic teams. In total, Urbanchek has coached 44 USA Olympians with 11 Gold medals including four world record holders.
Inducted into the Anaheim Hall of Fame in 2011, Urbanchek served as Anaheim High’s swim and 
water polo coach between 1963 and 1978, an era when his Colonist teams achieved CIF championships and All American honors.
After leaving
his native country of Hungary following his participation in the 1956 Olympic Games, Jon received a scholarship to the University of Michigan where he contributed to three NCAA Championships in 1958, 1959 and 1961.
A true legend among swimming coaches, Urbanchek was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame on July 6, 2008.
Barbara Ellen (McAlister) Talmage on the cover of a 1962 Sports Illustrated
Barbara Ellen (McAlister) Talmage from AUHS Class of 1959 became a championship diver who won seven Senior National Titles, took a gold medal in springboard diving at the 1963 Pan American Games and represented the U.S.A. as a diver in the 1964 and 1968 Olympics. Her image has graced the covers of both Sports Illustration and Life magazines.
Sid Sowder Freudenstein from the Class of 1963 carried the flag in the 1968 Olympics as co-captain of the Men’s Gymnastics Team in Mexico City. As a UC Berkeley student, Freudenstein won many invitationals, PAC 8, regional titles and national and international awards. In his senior year in 1968, he tied for first on floor exercise, and his team won the NCAA Championship.
At Anaheim High, he won many competitions, mostly on tumbling, floor and vault. In his senior year, he was the High Point Man (closest to All-Around) at the Southern California State Championships.
After ending his competitive career, Freudenstein returned to school at the University of Colorado (CU), earning a PhD in physics. While finishing his degree and raising a young family, he became head gymnastics coach at CU in the fall of 1976. Later he became chairman of the physics department at Metropolitan State University in Denver.
Track and field athlete Rick Sloan from Class of 1964 competed in the 1968 Olympics, placing 7th in the decathlon and becoming the fourth American in the sport to exceed 8,000 points. 
At UCLA, he became the first Bruin to exceed 7-feet in the high jump when he vaulted 7-1. An injury prevented him from competing in the high jump and vault in the Olympics, but his fate was sealed when a coach talked him into competing in the decathlon. Afraid to high jump on his bad leg, Sloan had only one practice jump before the Olympic tryouts, but he somehow cleared 6-11 ¾ to set a world record decathlon high jump record and make the U.S. team.
Kit Salness-Howser – Class of 1972
He parlayed his experience as a decathlete into a life-long career as a track and field coach. His career culminated as the men’s and women’s track and field head coach and the dean of Washington State University’s coaches. He retired from WSU in 2014 but said he had more coaching in him.
While he never returned to the Olympics as an athlete, Sloan is well known internationally in the multi-events circuits because of his 14 years as coach for four-time world decathlon champion, Olympic champion and former world record-holder Dan O’Brien and because of his mentoring of Olympic heptathlete Diana Pickler. He’s also coached the late Gabriel Tiacoh, the quarter-miler from Ivory Coast who won an Olympic silver medal in 1984.
Happy 100th birthday to Martin Geissler from Class of 1936. He will become a Centennial Colonist on Dec. 24, 2017.
Arthur and playwright 
A bit of fun trivia has come to light with the recent death of Jerry Lewis. Did you know that Anaheim High has a connection to this comedy great through Class of 1933 graduate Marie Wilson?
Former Saddleback College tennis coach Bill Otta, an Anaheim High Class of ’57 graduate, has been inducted into the Intercollegiate Tennis Association Hall of Fame during an enshrinement banquet held May 25, at the University of Georgia campus during the NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s Tennis Championships.
The college started its tennis program prior to the 1975 season with Otta being hired as the first tennis coach. He spent 22 years as the men’s tennis coach, capturing 17 conference titles, 10 Southern California regional titles, and eight state championships. He also spent three seasons as the women’s tennis coach, winning two more conference titles.
Of course, Bill was a standout tennis player at Anaheim, lettering four years. He went on to play for Fullerton College, where he was a conference champion of the FC championship teams in 1957 and 1958. He also played on the conference championship teams at CSU Los Angeles during 1960-62. His first coaching job was with AUHSD Magnolia High School from 1963 to 1967.
Lawrence “Larry” Macaray (’38) – artist, teacher, art collector and author – has contributed several pieces of art from his vast collection of work he amassed as proprietor of Anaheim’s first art gallery and as a world traveler.
A stress engineer in the aerospace defense industry for 30 years, Stan originally turned to painting as a means to relieve stress and serve as a diversion. Stan’s early successes convinced him to take his painting more seriously.
Stan began producing and marketing limited edition prints of his works in 1995. One of these works, “Impressing the Night Shift,” was recreated in “living art” during the Laguna Beach Pageant of the Masters’ 1999 millennium season. In 2008, Stan’s latest painting, “Lightning Lady,” won the ASAA award for Women’s Contribution to Aviation and third place in Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine’s annual art contest.
See more of his work at www.stanvosburg.com.
