After being the youngest of 596 athletes representing the United States at the Beijing Olympics, Elwood diver Mary Beth Dunnichay called timeout.

She went to sophomore classes at high school with friends, rather than be home-schooled.

She was a cheerleader. Got her driver’s license. Went to prom.

None of the above would be extraordinary, except it is extraordinarily hard to live a normal teen’s life and remain a world-class athlete.

Dunnichay lived normally. For a while.

“I think it was really great I got to do that,” the 16-year-old said. “It really got my head back in it.”

Now it’s on to other things. Like winning a medal.

Dunnichay and Haley Ishimatsu, also 16, were fifth in the 10-meter platform synchronized event at Beijing last year. They will try to improve on that finish Sunday in the World Championships at Rome.

“I think we’re both of the same mind-set,” Dunnichay said. “We can do this. We could come back with a medal this time.”

In synchro, athletes perform the same dives simultaneously and are judged individually and as a team for scoring.

The two teens trained together daily last year, then re-united recently. After the Olympics, Ishimatsu moved home to California.

Olympic coach John Wingfield said the break Dunnichay took last fall was not only welcome, but necessary. The coach said she followed a nutrition plan, stayed fit, went to the pool once in a while.

Wingfield said he wasn’t surprised because the diver has always been mature beyond her years.

Dunnichay wanted to be a cheerleader in football because it was the senior season for her brother, Jacob, a star running back. Going to school allowed her to “get back into the loop,” said her mother, Marian.

The town of Elwood organized a parade and celebration in Dunnichay’s honor last July, but she wasn’t a celebrity at school.

“I was just regular Mary Beth, back in school like I used to be,” she said. “Nothing really changed like that.”

She resumed training in Indianapolis, and home-schooling, during the winter.

After securing her license, she made the daily 47-mile commute in her sport utility vehicle to the Natatorium at IUPUI. Time away so benefited her that she has not only thrived in synchro, but nearly won a medal on individual platform at a meet in Sheffield, England.

Sunday will mark the end of the season for Dunnichay, who requires surgery for a small cyst on her wrist.

But pain wasn’t the toughest part of re-entry. That was overcoming “fear points,” Wingfield said.

Fear of jumping from 33 feet, or the height of a three-story building, is something that even champion divers acknowledge. Dunnichay said it is only an issue when learning new dives.

“Yes, there’s always that fear,” she said. “But it’s the fact that you can overcome it and do it anyway.”

She did have one fear common to high school girls — missing prom. She was on a U.S. team for an international meet at Montreal in early May, but the timetable coincided with the dance.

She had a date, boyfriend Kevin Worsley, who is her brother’s best friend. She had traveled to so many countries already — Australia, China, Spain, Italy, Brazil — that it was an easy choice.

“You know, you don’t get prom back,” she told her mother.