The Atlanta Beat was an American

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 Football player, players who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a Ball (association football), ball around a rectangular f ...

club based in

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ...

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

that competed on a professional level. The team joined

Women's Professional Soccer Women's Professional Soccer (WPS) was the top-level professional women's soccer league in the United States. It began play on March 29, 2009. The league was composed of seven teams for its first two seasons and fielded six teams for the 2011 ...

as an expansion team in 2010, and played its home games at Kennesaw State University Soccer Stadium, the result of a public-private partnership between the team and

Kennesaw State University Kennesaw State University (KSU) is a public research university in the U.S. state of Georgia with two campuses in the Atlanta metropolitan area, one in the Kennesaw area and the other in Marietta on a combined of land. The school was founded ...

. The club took the name and logo of the former

Atlanta Beat (WUSA) The Atlanta Beat was a professional soccer team that played in the Women's United Soccer Association. The team played at Bobby Dodd Stadium on the campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology in its first year of operation before moving to Hern ...

of the defunct

Women's United Soccer Association The Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA) was the world's first women's soccer league in which all the players were paid as professionals. Founded in February 2000, the league began its first season in April 2001 with eight teams in the Uni ...

History

Name and colors

The team's name was announced to be the Beat on June 18, 2009. The name was determined by a fan poll, with Attack, Beat, and Storm as the options. The new Beat logo was the same design as the previous WUSA logo, with the two shades of blue being replaced by Gold and

Ferrari Ferrari S.p.A. (; ) is an Italian luxury sports car manufacturer based in Maranello. Founded in 1939 by Enzo Ferrari (1898–1988), the company built Auto Avio Costruzioni 815, its first car in 1940, adopted its current name in 1945, and be ...

Red.

Building the team

Atlanta began building its team at the 2009 WPS Expansion Draft on September 15, 2009, where it selected six players from the existing seven WPS teams, getting four players from the teams that finished first and second in the league's inaugural season. A week later, Atlanta selected five international players in the

2009 WPS International Draft The 2009 WPS International Draft was a special draft for the Women's Professional Soccer teams Atlanta Beat (WPS), Atlanta Beat and Philadelphia Independence taking place on September 22, 2009. Each expansion team picked up to five international p ...

, including three players from Umea IK, and thus now have exclusive negotiating rights to those players among WPS teams.

Inaugural season

The Beat ended the 2010 season in last place with 5 wins, 13 losses, and 6 ties.

2011 season

The Atlanta Beat started off the 2011 season on April 9 in a game against the

Boston Breakers The Boston Breakers were an American professional women's soccer club based in the Boston neighborhood of Allston. The team competed in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). They replaced the original Breakers, who competed in the defu ...

in front of over slightly 4,000 spectators at KLS Stadium. The Beat lost 1–4 to Boston with their lone goal coming from

Carli Lloyd Carli Anne Hollins (; born July 16, 1982) is an American former professional Association football, soccer player. She is a two-time Olympic Games, Olympic gold medalist (2008 and 2012), two-time FIFA Women's World Cup champion (2015 and 2019) ...

in a penalty kick in the 78th minute.

Players

2011 roster

League suspension

On January 30, 2012,

announced suspension of the 2012 season, citing several internal organization struggles as the primary cause. Some of these included an ongoing legal battle with an ex-franchise owner and the lack of resources invested into the league.

References

External links

* (archived) Association football clubs established in 2010 Women's Professional Soccer teams Women's soccer clubs in the United States B Soccer clubs in Georgia (U.S. state) {{GeorgiaUS-footyclub-stub