Nearly six decades before Atlanta played host to matches in the 2026 FIFA World Cup, a handful of professional soccer players from around the world showed up at a DeKalb County YMCA with an idea: teach American kids a game most had never heard of.
That idea became the first YMCA youth soccer league in the country and, according to the YMCA of Metro Atlanta, a launching pad for the sport’s rise across the United States.
Lauren Koontz, president and CEO of the YMCA of Metro Atlanta, traces the YMCA’s soccer history back to 1967, when the Atlanta Chiefs arrived as the city’s first professional soccer team…