Soccer Star Alex Morgan Hosts Mini-Camp On Miami Beach
MIAMI (CBSMiami) - The 2012 U.S. Soccer Female Athlete of the Year was in Miami Beach Monday morning.
Alex Morgan held a mini-indoor soccer camp for young girls at the Scott Rakow Youth Center. As she walked into the gymnasium, the girls cheered, "USA, USA, USA!"
The star athlete is an Olympic gold medalist and a finalist for last year's FIFA World Player of the Year.
Morgan understands all the buzz surrounding the World Cup. She played in the women's final match against Japan in 2011 and currently plays professional for the Portland Thorns.
"We have the World qualifier tournament in October so we can qualify for the World Cup next year," Morgan said.
The kids were thrilled and couldn't wait to get a turn to talk with her.
"I want to ask her if it's fun being a soccer player because I really want to be one," said 10 year old Gianna Satchell of Miami Beach.
Morgan was also in town to promote her three book series titled, 'The Kicks.'
"It's about a girls soccer team and just how they have to face a lot of teamwork and balance of school, soccer, and boys and kind of dealing with everything at that age," said Morgan.
But it wasn't all work while here in South Florida. Morgan has been watching the World Cup games in Brazil and is aware of all the controversies. Her thoughts on the biting incident?
"I've never seen it happen before and its happened three times from Louis Suarez," she said. "I think it's pretty shocking that he would do it on the international stage with so many cameras on, so I do think it was right of FIFA to have such an excessive, big ban for him."
As for yesterday's penalty call leading to Mexico's elimination?
"This was the third one and I think the ref felt pressured to make that call even though it was a flop," she said.
Morgan also added that if she was the ref, she would've called it a dive and just issued a yellow card and Mexico might still be in the competition.
Morgan said she'll be in front of a television watching Team USA take on Belgium Tuesday afternoon.
Watch Walter Makaula's report, click here.
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