Landon Donovan Research Paper

Born on March 4, 1982, one of America’s greatest and most inspirational soccer players was introduced to the world. Landon Timothy Donovan a boy born in Ontario, California is known to be one of the best American soccer player to ever make onto the big stage. Son to parents, Tim Donovan and Donna Kenney-Cash, Landon was a very active kid growing up. Playing many sports such as soccer and gymnastics, he loved the competitive side of things. Growing up with four siblings, Sheri Baltzer, Tristan Donovan, Josh Donovan and Tim Donovan Jr. you can imagine it was very hectic and competitive around the Donovan household. When Donovan was six years old, his mother let him join his first organized league. After scoring seven goals in his first game,

To be a outstanding professional soccer player, it is usually the case that you need to be tall, fast and very strong. The interesting thing about Landon is that he doesn’t really fall into the tall and strong categories. Standing pretty short at 5 feet 8 inches it is very hard for Landon to win ball in the air over tall center backs or muscle the ball off a player when you are almost four or five inches smaller then them, but Landon has shown us how to use your own positives to your advantage. With being very small, Landon is quite agile and can dribble the ball very quickly. Knowing this Landon has learned to use these skills to get around many player and score many goals and by doing this he has shown many smaller than average player that they are not at a disadvantage. Knowing Landon as the former big soccer star, I imagined him growing up mostly playing soccer and nothing else but what came to my surprise is that Landon was actually an accomplished gymnast. Going most of the through high school, Landon did both soccer and gymnastics as his sports. Once the big soccer deals came in, Landon quite the gymnastics dream and moved on to just soccer but it is still fascinating that he did both most of his way through his way through high