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Angela Hucles is an exceptional athlete, intelligent woman and dedicated humanitarian. She was the offensive star for Team USA at the Beijing Olympics. Her 4 goals in the tournament were a team high and helped power the team to a gold-medal victory. Hucles turned to soccer at the age of 7 after deciding that competitive swimming wasn't her thing because of early mornings and freezing water. She played with boys' teams until she was 13 and showed such dramatic talent at a young age that she made the varsity team at her high school when she was in just 7th grade. Angela finished her time at Norfolk Academy with an impressive 204 goals and 106 assists and is still their all-time leading scorer. At the University of Virginia, Hucles continued her quest to become one of the best. She was named to the all-conference first team for all hour years and was a four-time Mid-Atlantic All-Star. Angela still holds the record for the most game-winning goals at Virginia and also leads her alma mater in all-time scoring with 59 goals and 139 points in her collegiate career. In 1999, Hucles was a finalist for the Hermann trophy, awarded to the top female Division I soccer player in the country. In 2000, Hucles played for the Hampton Roads Piranhas in the W-League and led the league in assists. In the 2001 inaugural WUSA draft, Angela was selected to play for the Boston Breakers and scored the first goal in the team's history. She was named to the All-WUSA 2nd Team in 2002, and in 2003 she helped her team make the playoffs for the first time. Angela made her first appearance for the U.S. Women's National Team in 2002 and scored her first international goal at the CONCACAF Women's Gold Cup to help her team qualify for the 2003 Women's World Cup. She helped her team win Olympic Gold in Athens in 2004, and in that year also notched her first two-goal game in the Algarve Cup. 2008 has been one of Hucles' most successful in her career thus far, including scoring a stoppage-time game-winning goal in the Peace Queen Cup championship game and being named that tournament's Most Valuable Player. She and her teammates just completed the "Achieve Your Gold" tour to celebrate their gold medal victory in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Angela passionately believes in donating her time to make the world a better place. She works with the Massachusetts state Treasury Department's "Savings Makes Cents" program, speaking with children at schools about the importance of saving money. Hucles is also a spokesperson for New England SCORES, an organization whose mission is to empower students in urban communities using soccer, writing, creative expression and service-learning and inspires them to lead healthy lifestyles, be engaged students, and become agents of change in their communities. Angela also volunteers with CityKicks, an after school developmental soccer program for under-served middle school girls in Boston Public Schools. In 2008, she was selected for the Women's Sports Foundation Athlete Advisory Board, and in 2009, she was named Humanitarian of the Year by the U.S. Soccer Foundation. Angela comes from a soccer-centric and academic family. Her younger brother Phillip served as captain for the men's soccer team at the College of WIlliam and Mary, and her father, Michael, is a referee. Her mother, Janis Sanchez-Hucles, is a professor of psychology at Old Dominion and has helped educate soccer coaches about diversity and gender issues in order to increase opportunities in the sport for women of color and women in general. Angela graduated from UVA with a degree in anthropology and wrote columns on women's sports for the Boston Metro during the 2002 WUSA season. She currently lives in Boston and played for the Boston Breakers in the 2009 inaugural season of the Women's Professional Soccer league.
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