Karate Kids : Ventura County Teen Black Belts Schultz, Robinson Striving to Make Impact on U.S. Junior National Team

Being known around Ventura High as the “Karate Chick” has certain advantages for senior Amber Schultz.

Most notably: “It keeps the troublemakers away,” the 17-year-old national karate champion said. Much to her chagrin, however, her reputation attracts all those fun-loving guys who are still at an age when teasing a girl isn’t considered grounds for a lawsuit.

For instance, Schultz can be standing on campus, minding her own business, when “a guy will come up from behind, lift me up, and ask me to fight.” Just joking, of course.

Although it is still socially acceptable in high school to hit on a girl, Schultz literally gets hit--by boys who good-naturedly give her shots to the shoulder--and she is often not amused. “They think I like it,” she said. “I have to tell people I’m not a punching bag.”

Fortunately for the wise guys, Schultz has been trained to stay out of fights, except in authorized tournaments. Last month in Columbus, Ohio, she won two gold medals in the Junior Olympics, which is run by the USA Karate Federation, an affiliated member of the U.S. Olympic Committee. The boys will be interested to hear that a bloody mouth didn’t even make her flinch.

“I’ve been taught not to let it show when I’m hurt--just suck it up,” said Schultz, an energetic, 5-foot-1 1/2 blonde with a ponytail.

Attention guys: Although Schultz fights girls in tournaments, she can hold her own against boys: She is the only girl black belt in her class at Japan Karate-Do Meibukai, an Oxnard dojo located above a ballet studio. Recently, she was sparring with Steve Robinson, a 15-year-old Hueneme High sophomore, and scored points with crisp punches and kicks.

“She really hits hard,” said Robinson, who was selected along with Schultz to be on the U.S. team for the Mikulas Cup, an international junior competition to be held in Hungary on Dec. 6-7.

Another warning for the boys at Ventura High: Schultz might not have an older brother to defend her, but her little brother can do the job. Drew Schultz, 10, also is a national karate champion in his age group and has been studying the sport even longer than his sister.

Six years ago, when the family was living in Manchester, Ohio, Drew watched “The Karate Kid” and was inspired to start taking lessons. Had the movie been “The Flamingo Kid,” which is about a gin-rummy whiz, Amber might have been a card shark today.

A year after Drew took up karate, Rose and Jim Schultz enrolled their daughter to tap her hyperkinetic energy and “because she was a short little squirt and I didn’t want anybody taking advantage of her on dates,” her father said.

Karate calmed down the Schultz kids. “People think karate makes kids fighters,” said Jim, an artist, “but it’s done the opposite with mine.”

Amber was a self-described “class clown” and general cutup until karate “gave me discipline,” she said, “and turned me around. I also got confidence because I found something I was good at. Before, I didn’t like meeting people. Now I love it.”

Schultz was not this perky a year ago when her parents broke the news that the family would be moving from Ohio to California--Rose, manager of a temporary-employment service, had been transferred. “I was dead set against moving,” Amber said. Her attitude began adjusting itself as soon as she walked off the plane Jan. 1 and saw palm trees swaying in a balmy breeze. “Now I just love it here,” she said.

Her transformation into a California girl evidently moved her up a notch on the teen-age evolutionary ladder. The contrast between her ho-hum Midwest existence and her new life came into sharp focus recently. While competing in Ohio, she visited her old high school and found it “really boring. It was kind of depressing. My friends did nothing--there’s nothing to do there.”

Except karate. Several of Schultz’s old girlfriends did karate. Evidently, Ventura girls would rather go to the beach. “I wish more girls here would sign up” for karate, she said. “But there’s just so many other things to do.”

Schultz was a karate comer almost from the time she strapped a white belt around her gi . But she credits instructor Hide Igaki for fine-tuning her skills. When she started at his dojo last spring, “He said I was really horrible,” she said. “He noticed all the little things I was doing wrong--like telegraphing punches and turning my head.”

Both Schultz and Robinson are trained by Igaki, who pronounces them “ready, spiritually and physically,” for the junior championships in Hungary. What they are not ready for, however, is the credit-card bill for the trip. Like most fringe members of the USOC, USA Karate does not have the cash to subsidize its athletes. So Amber and Steve rely on their parents to charge their expenses and on donations from local service groups to repay them.

“I’m cleaning my mom’s offices” to earn money, Amber said.

Money is always a problem in competitive karate, which demands extensive traveling to major tournaments. “I ran out of money in New Orleans (at the nationals),” Robinson said. Igaki had to “lend me $20 so I could eat.”

Robinson, president of his class at Hueneme, does not have the same problems with teasing as Schultz has at Ventura, perhaps because hardly anybody knows about his proficiency in karate.

“Only my close friends know I’m a black belt,” he said. “I don’t have a ‘big karate man’ attitude.”

But he does have the same options as Schultz: “If I have to fight, I can.”