SURFING and SOCCER : Mira Costa’s Robyn Kropp Is a Standout on Land and Sea

Robyn Kropp likes unpredictable opponents who do nasty things like smashing you when you test their tempers.

But Kropp, whose heart is balanced between surf and turf, isn’t daunted by the hazards of riding waves. That’s one reason why, at age 17, she’s one of California’s premier amateur surfers.

She’s also one of the area’s top prep soccer players, and her 19 goals this season are 19 reasons why Mira Costa High School won its second straight Ocean League title. The team begins playoff competition at home today at 3 p.m. against El Toro, a 2-0 victor over Huntington Beach in Wednesday’s wild card game.

Mira Costa Coach Kevin McBride, whose Mustangs captured the league crown for the fourth time in his four years at the school, doesn’t mind his star forward’s obsession with the water.

“She’s always fighting the waves, so she’s a highly conditioned athlete,” McBride said. “And it shows in her actions on the field. Before a game is 20 minutes old, Robyn becomes a marked person.

“She’s a delight to coach. She only needs to hear something once or twice, and when that situation comes up in a game, she’s ready.”

In two years at Mira Costa, Kropp has made her mark. The junior led the Mustangs (13-5-4 overall, 7-1 in league) in scoring for the second straight year and set a school record for most goals in a game, four, which she managed twice, against Santa Monica and Culver City. And with 14 assists, she’s been feeding forwards Danielle Compton and Piper Hahn often.

“A good forward like Robyn is hard to find,” McBride said. “It’s in her competitive nature--she always wants to drive it in there. . . . She’s smart enough to get off a good shot or work the ball to where she can cross it, so she knows an assist is as good as a goal.”

And despite her petite frame--she’s only 5-6--Kropp gives as good as she gets.

“If a rough-and-tough girl knocks her down, Robyn will just make a nice crossing pass or score a goal on her next trip down the field,” McBride said. “That’s just her way of playing clean and hard.”

McBride admits girls soccer is evolving into a rougher sport. Kropp is anything but masculine, however. Fresh-faced and tanned, blonde and pony-tailed, Kropp boasts the classic sun-fed good looks of the “California Girl” prototype.

“If somebody’s going to hit me, I don’t stop to worry about it ruining the way I look,” Kropp said. “But I don’t act like a bully. A lot of girls in soccer are tough, but I don’t think they get anything out of it except getting worked up.”

Kropp’s surf idol is Tom Curren, who at 24 is the men’s world pro surfing champion.

“Whenever I tell people that Tom Curren is my idol, they say, ‘No, who’s your girl idol,” Kropp said. “But you see, I want to be better than all the girls.”

So Kropp generally feels at home paddling out on her board into a sea of guys .

“In the old days, the guys would say, ‘This is a guy’s sport, and the girls should all be in the kitchen,’ ” Kropp said. “But now girls are more accepted out there. The younger girls know that if they surf like a girl they’re not going to make it. You’ve got to take a more powerful style and go for it.”

It’s that aggressive attitude in the waves that has earned her six National Scholastic Surfing Assn. contest titles and top ranking in the NSSA’s state Explorer division for girls 18 and under. In July she’ll go to Hawaii for the U. S. Championships. And she has a good chance to be one of two girls to make the 15-member NSSA traveling team at the national trials in Huntington Beach in August.

“A lot of good surfers come out of the South Bay,” Kropp said. “We surf a lot of bad waves--’closed-out’ waves--so South Bay surfers learn on the worst. When we get to the best waves we’re just that much better.”

Kropp is among a pack of gifted amateurs that the surf tabloids often refer to as “upcoming surfers.” They’re young board rats who shred waves armed with resumes and photo albums in a quest for national team berths. These resumes often include grade reports--the NSSA team, which takes on the top amateur surfers from Australia and Japan, prefers surfers with good grades to buttress the sport’s new clean image.

Kropp’s clean image will probably get her into the lineup of a college soccer team. A naval aviator’s daughter, Kropp would like to go to college near the ocean--UC Santa Barbara, St. Mary’s or San Diego State--because she loves the beach atmosphere. After college, she might consider a pro surfing career.

“Surfing is always different,” she said. “You’re not competing against a person. It’s always you against the wave.

“But it’s never the same wave.”