Early Years
Donovan was born on March 4, 1982, in Ontario, California, to Donna Kenney-Cash, a special education teacher, and Tim Donovan, a semi-professional ice hockey player originally from Canada.
When Donovan was six, his mother allowed him to join an organized league, and he scored seven goals in his first game. Donovan was a member of Cal Heat – a club based in Rancho Cucamonga under coach Clint Greenwood. In 1997, he was accepted into U.S. Youth Soccer's (football) Olympic Development Program. He attended Redlands East Valley High School in California. In 1999, Donovan attended the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, part of U.S. Soccer's training program. While at IMG Academy Donovan almost had his feet bitten off by an alligator while enjoying a post-training round of golf.
Read more about this topic: Landon Donovan
Famous quotes containing the words early years, early and/or years:
“Parents ... are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don’t fulfil the promise of their early years.”
—Anthony Powell (b. 1905)
“Today’s pressures on middle-class children to grow up fast begin in early childhood. Chief among them is the pressure for early intellectual attainment, deriving from a changed perception of precocity. Several decades ago precocity was looked upon with great suspicion. The child prodigy, it was thought, turned out to be a neurotic adult; thus the phrase “early ripe, early rot!””
—David Elkind (20th century)
“Six years of such small preoccupations!
Six years of shuttling in and out of this place!
O my hunger! My hunger!
I could have gone around the world twice
or had new children all boys.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)