{"id":537301,"date":"2021-04-07T14:02:01","date_gmt":"2021-04-07T14:02:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.abnewswire.com\/pressreleases\/?p=537301"},"modified":"2021-04-07T14:02:01","modified_gmt":"2021-04-07T14:02:01","slug":"clevelands-athlete-for-change-kotaro-umeda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.abnewswire.com\/pressreleases\/clevelands-athlete-for-change-kotaro-umeda_537301.html","title":{"rendered":"Cleveland\u2019s Athlete for Change, Kotaro Umeda"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"float:right;  width:250px; padding:8px 10px 10px 10px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.abnewswire.com\/uploads\/1617802351.jpeg\" style=\"border:none !important;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-29\" title=\"Cleveland&rsquo;s Athlete for Change, Kotaro Umeda\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abnewswire.com\/uploads\/1617802351.jpeg\" alt=\"Cleveland&rsquo;s Athlete for Change, Kotaro Umeda\" width=\"225\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-style:italic; padding:8px 0px;\">The Mayfield native published his first book I\u2019m With You, where he has donated 100% of the profit to United Way of Cleveland to help support poverty and racism in his home city of Cleveland.<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Many people from Cleveland may know Kotaro Umeda from his accomplishments on the field like being a top recruit in the nation or being the first professional Asian Athlete in Joinville, Brazil, but that is not what has made the headlines this time for the 23-year-old. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Mayfield native published his first book I&rsquo;m With You, where he has donated 100% of the profit to United Way of Cleveland to help support poverty and racism in his home city of Cleveland.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Asian-Americans have seen a spike in racial discrimination in the past few months and he has been the voice that they needed.&nbsp; &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want anyone to think they&rsquo;re alone in the fight. I titled my book I&rsquo;m With You because I wanted people to know that whatever struggle or discomfort they&rsquo;re going through, they&rsquo;re not alone, that I&rsquo;m with you,&rdquo; stated Umeda. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Kotaro is fully Japanese, born to a Japanese mother and father, and he shares some of the difficulties he experienced through his life. <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Things was real tough sometimes. As a minority, there were things I couldn&rsquo;t do, certain expectations I had to meet, and multiple stereotypes I couldn&rsquo;t escape from. It&rsquo;s like these people hated me for no reason,&rdquo; said Umeda. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Umeda was traded from Joinville Esporte Clube to Pevidem SC in Portugal and speaks on this past year.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&ldquo;This season has been really difficult for me individually. It&rsquo;s the first time in my career where I had multiple injuries back to back. I questioned God about what was going on and it&rsquo;s like he woke me up. It&rsquo;s like he wanted me to see what was going on in the real world. And now, my body is fully recovering and I am so grateful for this opportunity&rdquo; said Umeda in an interview. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Umeda has spent most of his professional career outside of Cleveland but he never forgets where he came from. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&ldquo;I still haven&rsquo;t reached the peak of my career as an athlete but that&rsquo;s not my only goal. I want to help my people. We have to attempt the impossible because that&rsquo;s the only way we make it possible,&rdquo; stated Umeda.<\/p>\n<p><span style='font-size:18px !important;'>Media Contact<\/span><br \/><strong>Contact Person:<\/strong> Kotaro Umeda<br \/><strong>Email:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.abnewswire.com\/email_contact_us.php?pr=clevelands-athlete-for-change-kotaro-umeda\" rel=\"nofollow\">Send Email<\/a><br \/><strong>Country:<\/strong> United States<br \/><strong>Website:<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/obsesh.com\/athletes\/115\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">http:\/\/obsesh.com\/athletes\/115<\/a><\/p>\n<p><object type=\"text\/html\" data=\"http:\/\/obsesh.com\/athletes\/115\" style=\"width:900px; height:400px;\"><\/object><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abnewswire.com\/press_stat.php?pr=clevelands-athlete-for-change-kotaro-umeda\" alt=\"\" width=\"1px\" height=\"1px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Mayfield native published his first book I\u2019m With You, where he has donated 100% of the profit to United Way of Cleveland to help support poverty and racism in his home city of Cleveland. Many people from Cleveland may &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.abnewswire.com\/pressreleases\/clevelands-athlete-for-change-kotaro-umeda_537301.html\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444,412,446,431,404],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-537301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Government-Politics","category-News-Current-Affairs","category-Society-Culture","category-Sports","category-US"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abnewswire.com\/pressreleases\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abnewswire.com\/pressreleases\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abnewswire.com\/pressreleases\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abnewswire.com\/pressreleases\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abnewswire.com\/pressreleases\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.abnewswire.com\/pressreleases\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abnewswire.com\/pressreleases\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abnewswire.com\/pressreleases\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abnewswire.com\/pressreleases\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}