The US women’s national soccer team is inspiring Big Apple girls with goals of soccer stardom, proving that ladies kick butt just as well — and probably better — than the men.
The team’s smashing success is sending enrollment in youth soccer programs into overdrive, turning 10-year-olds into seasoned analysts, and even winning over a few boys, coaches and young players told The Post.
“In 2015 when they won the World Cup, our numbers shot through the roof. We ran out of space,” Downtown United Soccer Club Coach Adam Norse said of the 2015 US women’s team.
He expects the same if this year’s squad beats the Netherlands Sunday in Lyon, France, which would mark Team USA’s fourth world championship since the Women’s World Cup began in 1991.
“We had 65 kids here for a watch party on Tuesday,” Norse said. “They’ve got role models, players to look up to. They’re copying them, playing like them . . . We talk all the time about how hard they practice.”
Ten-year-old Clara Fein-Vargo is eager to learn from her idols, collecting an encyclopedia of knowledge about the star-studded US squad.
“Watching the way they move and the way each pass is executed . . . but also how mentally ready they are,” she said during a day camp at the club on Friday at Manhattan’s Pier 40.
“The US is really deep, which is good,” she assessed. “In the midfield, we are wonderful. If you don’t have [Rose] Lavelle you have [Julie] Ertz and if you don’t have Ertz you have [Lindsey] Horan and [Samantha] Mewis.
The women’s national team is showing girls that they don’t have to take a backseat to anyone.
“I think some people overlook female players, they only focus on the men, but I think that we can play better than them,” 13-year-old Kyla Love Amezquita declared while practicing with the American Youth Soccer Organization Saturday in Marine Park.
The boys are so impressed by the players’ prowess, they don’t even see gender when they watch the USWNT.
“The men’s team doesn’t win many tournaments, but the women do, so it’s an inspiration to other soccer players,” said Downtown United player Max Haeri, 13.
And although players like Alex Morgan have lit up the Internet with meme-worthy taunts, Trinity Rosario, 16, was more in awe of Morgan’s sportsmanship.
“At the end of one of the games, her and her [teammates] kind of hugged,” Rosario said. “I like seeing that stuff because it shows they’re having fun, they’re not just doing it for the money.”
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