Martial arts teen, Las Vegas Sun

Tae kwon do teen proves that sometimes kicks are for kids Lisa Sciortino Thursday, March 7, 1996 | 11:59 a.m. Her lips are painted a frosty pink, her cheeks blushed a rosy hue. A dark, curly ponytail, tied with a pretty polka-dot bow, bobs on the back of her head. Cute, all right, but don't take this 17-year-old lightly. There's a fierceness in Fiona de Gorostiza's hazel eyes. And three degrees of blackness in her belt. Meet the women's tae kwon do world champion, a title bestowed upon the top five in each black-belt division. She's currently ranked second. On a recent night, she is readying to show her stuff, but not in a title bout. This time, she's about to spar with Travis Dillow, 17, a fellow classmate at the Karate for Kids school in Henderson. "It's a rematch," Fiona says, "because I creamed his butt yesterday." Soon, the pummeling of powerful kicks, machine-gun jabs and gut-wrenching grunts begins. Her eyes are fixed in a glare while her body bounces slightly on the masking-taped mat on the floor. "Go, Missus D!" her classmates cheer. An onslaught of punches and kicks knocks down her opponent. She's done it again. So it usually goes for Fiona, the only teenage third-degree black belt in Nevada. This weekend, she'll get back in the ring again to compete in the American Tae Kwon Do Association National Championships at Cashman Field Center. Not bad for someone who started taking martial arts lessons with her younger brother, Georg, five years ago as a hobby. It didn't take long before Fiona started racking up the black belts. Within a year, she earned her first-degree rank, then rocketed to second-degree at age 14. To earn black belt No. 3 last year, Fiona had to break a slew of wooden boards, take part in a sparring match and demonstrate forms, a series of specific martial-arts techniques that are "kind of like a dance, but it's not," she says. Fiona, a senior at Silverado High, has competed in nearly 100 competitions around the country, including the junior division of the 1994 ATA World Championships, in which she took the top spot. To prove it, she sports the traditional red letters identifying her as a world champion on the back of her white uniform. But being the best "is not really a big deal for me," Fiona says. "It doesn't really get to my head, because stuff can happen. You can always have a bad day and somebody who has never beaten you before can beat you." Maybe that's why she never set lofty tae kwon do goals for herself. She knew the competition in the women's division (ages 17-25) would be tough. "They're much more experienced than me, they've been in it a lot longer, they're bigger," she says. "I'm young. That's one thing working against me. In a way, you're a rookie in your ring." But her strength makes up for her greenness: This "rookie" can break four 1-inch-thick wood boards with one powerful kick from her 5-foot-5 frame. Alter ego Fiona had to learn to be tough. When she took up the sport, very few women were competing. "It was just me and the guys. I guess that's why I got so good at sparring; I'd have to spar these huge men. They'd pound me." Not anymore. Now the only abuse she gets is an occasional verbal jab from the guys on the school football team. And that's for being a cheerleader. She tries to keep her alter ego -- as a lean, mean, tae kwon do machine -- separate from her spirited school self. Especially from guys, she says, "because they kind of get intimidated. I feel like saying, 'If you get in a fight, I'd let you fight, I wouldn't help.'" But the cat came out of the bag last year, when the Silverado players found out. "They always joke, 'Who's that cheerleader who's a world champion in martial arts? Can you beat us up?'" Well, can she? "Not all at once. One by one, maybe." 'Macho' image Cheerleading, Fiona says, is her escape from martial arts' "macho" image. "It originated as a man's sport," she explains. "By old traditions, (cheerleading is) a girls thing. So I just thought, I can have two worlds here." But those worlds do collide from time to time. "What I don't like to see is when she cheers when she does her martial arts," says Fiona's instructor, Leland Brandon, owner of Karate for Kids. "Sometimes I see her mixing the two together -- the head bobbing, the bouncing, the 'Come on, everybody' (type of) spirit -- when it's not supposed to be in there. But that's a fault I can live with." Brandon, also a third-degree black belt, says he spotted Fiona's potential to become a world champion years ago. "She's a hard worker. Everybody around Fiona places Fiona on high standards, but Fiona places herself on even higher standards than that," he says. "There's nobody that can touch her. The competition's intimidated by her." She sings, too! So what does intimidate her? The national anthem. She gets several requests each year to croon the tune at various events, including this weekend's competition. "I'm more nervous about that" than competing, Fiona says. "It's not just the people around my ring watching me, it's the whole (audience at) Cashman Field focused in on me." But after that, the focus may fade for a little while, at least. Because the ATA rules prohibit her from testing for her fourth-degree black belt until she's 21, Fiona will have to "chill" in her martial arts advancement for the next few years. For now, she's training to become an instructor and could be certified next year. She teaches a few classes each week at Karate for Kids. "Teaching is the coolest thing," she says. Young students need "instructors who are real patient. If you treat them in a way that blows off their self-esteem, they shut off completely towards you." She's had a tougher time getting grown-ups to take her seriously, though. "They can't relate to a teenager teaching them," she says. "You kind of have to say, 'OK, you're the student, I'm the teacher. This may be different on the outside world ... but it's different in here.' "I think the coolest thing is when adult men come in and they see me up at the front of the room giving them orders. They don't take that too well in the beginning. After a while they really start to have some respect." The same respect Fiona holds for the sport and her title. "I feel I always have to do my best," she says. "The responsibility of being a black belt and knowing that these little kids are looking up to you. They think so highly (of me), and I'm like, 'Why? It's just me.'"