U.S. soccer great Landon Donovan offers how to “Beat the Heat” at IMG Academy visit

Despite the overcast skies, humidity still made for a warm Wednesday morning at IMG Academy’s soccer fields.

It was the perfect combination for United States soccer great Landon Donovan to impart the importance of hydration in Gatorade’s 12th annual Beat the Heat program in front of the 130 campers that are at IMG this week.

“I think that it’s important that they understand clearly that there are things you can do on a soccer field that make you better, but there’s a lot of other pieces of the game that you need to get to the highest level,” said Donovan, who is the United States Men’s National Team’s all-time leading scorer with 57 goals.

To highlight the critical aspect of staying hydrated within sports to reduce heat-related illnesses, Donovan shared his own first experience dealing with Florida’s humid heat when he was a member of the U.S. Men’s National Team U-17s that take residence up at IMG Academy.

“After a few games, I couldn’t play past 60 minutes and I didn’t know what was going on,” Donovan said. “I was always the fittest kid ever and I realized that after talking to trainers and coaches, I just wasn’t hydrated. It was nothing that ever occurred to me. I just drank whatever I wanted growing up or I didn’t drink anything. I drank soda or whatever and I could run forever. You get into a climate like this, doesn’t happen, doesn’t work. So I had to learn that if I wanted to perform that I had to take care of myself.”

On Wednesday, Donovan spent about an hour with the campers, fielding questions from them and then watching them go through various shooting and dribbling drills. One camper, wearing a Robin Van Persie Manchester United jersey asked Donovan who the best player he ever played against.

Before answering, the California native brought everyone to laughter with a joke in reference to the camper’s allegiance to Man United.

“Nobody is perfect,” Donovan quipped to the group.

Then he answered that Lionel Messi is the best he’s played against, because you can’t knock him off the ball and he just keeps going.

“For kids like this when I was playing a long time ago, there was no soccer idols really,” IMG Academy director of soccer Rusty Scarborough said. “But Landon is an idol that the kids know and look up to. And so to have him on campus and be a part of this is tremendous.”

Donovan, who is a year into retirement from the beautiful game, even participated during one of the shooting drills after the campers comprised of boys and girls players of all youth ages. But despite his retirement, Donovan said he’s busier now than he was during his playing career. He has a six-month old son, is part of the ownership group that bought English club Swansea City, has done broadcasting work and plans on beginning coaching courses next week.

“I’m going to keep tipping my toes in a little bit and see what resonates,” Donovan said.

But with his legend with the U.S. Men’s National Team linked to the 2002 World Cup quarterfinal run that put him on the world’s map to the iconic 2010 World Cup goal against Algeria that sent Team USA into the knockout round, Donovan’s biggest link is with U.S. Soccer.

So he offered his thoughts on the culture of where U.S. Soccer is, even though he is not part of the organization, in 2016 as the Summer Olympics wage on in Rio de Janeiro and the men’s team won’t participate for a second consecutive Olympics.

“I think what’s happening is in the last five years, we’ve dumped a lot of resources into youth development. The problem with that is it takes time to show itself, right? So we live in this society where we want instant gratification. We want results now. We’ll only know in probably another five or 10 years if this is all working.”

This story was originally published August 10, 2016 at 1:30 PM with the headline "U.S. soccer great Landon Donovan offers how to “Beat the Heat” at IMG Academy visit."