While there’s plenty to talk about on the field right now (see all of this), Atlanta United’s community arm just hit a pretty significant milestone.
The Atlanta United Community Fund announced today that its GA 100 initiative, which you may recall is the club’s program to build up to 100 mini-pitches in under-resourced communities across Georgia, has crossed the halfway point. The club announced $1.15 million in new grants awarded to build 12 additional pitches, making the total number of mini-pitches completed or in development now at 53. Since launching in 2020, the program has committed nearly $4.5 million in funding for soccer pitches statewide, making it the most ambitious community pitch-build program in MLS (and admittedly I don’t think it’s close).
The timing here is big for obvious reasons, with Atlanta months away from hosting FIFA World Cup matches at Mercedes-Benz Stadium this summer. We know from the Olympics that a big part of what makes a host city’s legacy stick isn’t just the tournament itself, but it’s what gets left behind. Beyond the new grants, the program already has three more pitch openings scheduled before the World Cup kicks off: Floyd County YMCA in Rome on March 25, Andrew and Walter Young Family YMCA in Atlanta on May 12, and Atlanta Youth Soccer Association in Atlanta on June 2. Those openings will bring the total number of actual operational pitches to 22.
This year’s 12 grant recipients span the state, from Mableton to Valdosta to Rome to Lawrenceville and quite a few spots in between. The full list of 2026 recipients are here:
- A.W. Mathews Boys and Girls Club (Mableton)
- Atrium Health Polk Medical Center (Cedartown)
- Atrium Health (Rome)
- Atrium Health (Summerville)
- Bay Creek Middle School (Grayson)
- Berkmar Middle School (Lilburn)
- Boys and Girls Club of Valdosta (Statenville)
- Dacula Middle School (Dacula)
- Duluth Middle School (Duluth)
- Henderson Mill Elementary School (Atlanta)
- John Hope Community Center (Atlanta)
- New City Church: UPPER90 (Lawrenceville)
For those who don’t know the backstory, GA 100 took off back in 2020 when the Atlanta United Community Fund awarded $1.6 million to the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) to lead the first phase of installations. That initial round funded 20 pitches across 17 organizations. AUCF (not FC) made an additional investment in 2023 to construct an additional 30-plus mini-pitches through 2026, including this latest round. The program works by partnering with LISC to identify local nonprofits and community organizations that want to build or refurbish mini-pitches at schools, parks, and recreation centers. Once approved, LISC provides financing and technical support, and the local organizations handle construction, maintenance, and essentially everything else.
“As Atlanta prepares to take the global stage in 2026, it’s more important than ever that the growth of soccer is felt not just in our stadium, but in neighborhoods across Georgia,” said Skate Noftsinger, Chief Business Officer of Atlanta United.
It’s easy to lose sight of this stuff when the first team is 0-3 and everyone’s debating defensive shape and tifos and designated players, but the GA 100 program is genuinely a really awesome venture and one that personally hits close to home for me personally. Quite literally the place where I sat when I was seven and watched the 1996 Olympic torch run by is the site for one of these completed mini-pitches, and it gets used by people in our community every day. In my very humble opinion, hitting the halfway mark in a World Cup year is the kind of thing worth taking a second to celebrate, even if just for a minute.
You can take a look at more about the GA 100 program over at atlutd.com/ga100.