Atlanta, GA
Youth, served: Real Salt Lake pulls past Atlanta United to keep fast start
SANDY — Three games into the 2026 campaign and Real Salt Lake has a formula for success.
Spoiler alert: the kids are (still) all right.
Aiden Hezarkhani scored a goal for the second-straight week, rookie Sergi Solans added his first professional, and Real Salt Lake served its youth again en route to a 3-2 win over Atlanta United at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Fellow teenager Zavier Gozo also scored for Real Salt Lake, the Utah native’s first of the season after his breakout four-goal, three-assist campaign last year to help his home side improve to 2-1-0.
Aleksei Miranchuk had a brace for Atlanta, which fell to 0-3 while being outscored 7-2 a year after struggling to a 5-16-13 campaign.
“It was a shootout,” RSL manager Pablo Mastroeni said. “This was one of those games that was super exciting. It’s a real credit to the group on both sides of the ball. I thought we were really deliberate … and defensively, we were great against a top attacking group.
“We knew it was going to be difficult. But the guys weathered the storm … and we challenged the group to dig deep, to defend our box, and manage the game the right way.”
Salt Lake, meanwhile, has won two of its first three matches — even with a shorthanded roster. The club lost Diego Luna (knee) and Victor Olatunji (eye) to injuries during the same training session before the season opener in Vancouver, and former U.S. international fullback DeAndre Yedlin picked up a hamstring injury last week.
But if adversity spawns opportunity, Real Salt Lake’s rising generation is taking advantage of either — or both. Give credit, too, to the veteran players for bringing along the youth that also include 17-year-old Luca Moisa — and not skip a beat.
“It’s like a brotherhood,” Mastroeni said. “There’s no guy that’s bigger than the team.”
Gozo and Morgan Guilavogui nearly connected for a goal just 49 seconds into the match, but the newly signed Designated Player making his first start saw his shot tipped over the cross bar.
Instead, Guilavogui gave the visitors the early lead midway through the first half, slipping a brilliant through ball behind the defense to Solans for the clinical finish in the 23rd minute.
Solans was selected with the 30th overall pick of the 2025 MLS SuperDraft by Salt Lake, who traded $50,000 in general allocation money to the LA Galaxy in select the Spanish native.
But instead of signing forthright with the club, Solans elected to return to collect for one more year and the 22-year-old alumnus of Spain’s Girona FC academy returned to UCLA and scored a team-high 16 goals with six assists in 19 matches en route to All-American second-team honors and a program record-breaking third hat trick in the Big Ten Tournament final.
“Sergi doesn’t necessarily have top-end speed,” Mastroeni said, “but he has top-end timing. When you threaten the back line, you don’t have to have the fastest speed. But you do have to have the right timing.
“You’ve got to make plays — and that’s what making plays looks like.”
Hezarkhani doubled the lead in the 27th minute, gaining possession of the ball in the final third with his chest off an angled touch from Solans before sliding a right-footed shot from the center of the box that put Salt Lake up 2-0.
It’s the second goal in as many matches for Hezarkhani, the 18-year-old academy alumnus who had six goals with four assists in 21 matches (19 starts) for Salt Lake’s third-division affiliate Real Monarchs a year ago.
Miranchuk pulled one back for the home side in the 38th minute, scoring Atlanta’s first goal of 2026 with one touch from Elias Baez from the center of the box to cut the deficit to 2-1.
But Gozo finished a counter initiated by Philip Quinton and Justen Glad with his left less than two minutes later to push Salt Lake back in front 3-1 at halftime.
After a series of second-half introductions including the halftime debut of Utah native and former Corner Canyon High standout Griffin Dillon for RSL, Miranchuk added another for Atlanta in the 74th minute to cut the deficit to 3-2.
But Rafael Cabral made two saves on 16 shots faced to help the visitors hold on for their second straight win.
Real Salt Lake returns home next Saturday, March 14 to host Austin FC (7:30 p.m. MDT, Apple TV) before a road trip to San Diego FC.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
Photograph by Martha Williams
Atlanta diners may recognize the name Adidsara “Vicky” Weerasin as co-owner of both Tum Pok Pok, the beloved Thai restaurant in Chamblee, and Yao in Buckhead. But they might not know she’s also the person behind Chef’s Tableware, the ceramics shop all over many Atlantans’ “for you” page on TikTok. From its New Peachtree Road warehouse, Chef’s Tableware offers handcrafted plates, cups, and bowls, sourced from Thailand, that look like they’re from Anthropologie but sell for a fraction of the price. And while it is a wholesale operation, it’s open to both restaurant-industry professionals and savvy Atlanta shoppers.
Weerasin’s pieces appear on tables at top Atlanta restaurants, from the soft-green platform bowls used to showcase Claudia Martinez’s confectionery creations at Bar Ana to the speckled black plates heaped with pasta at BoccaLupo. Another place you can expect to find Chef’s Tableware selections is at Georgia Boy, the tasting menu–only restaurant in the back of Southern Belle. “I picked up matte black dinner plates, an artsy pedestal bowl with a bubbled ceramic finish, and concave, high-gloss porcelain pieces,” says Georgia Boy and Southern Belle chef and owner Joey Ward. “Each one helps elevate the way we present a dish.”
Weerasin first discovered her love of ceramics when she took a pottery-making class at her high school in Thailand. She’s now lived in Atlanta 20 years, but she returns to her homeland every year to visit family. It was during one such trip in 2023 that she visited a family member’s ceramics business and saw the type of stunning handmade pieces that now fill her store. She originally intended for her 4,500-square-foot, two-room space to be more of a friend-to-friend operation, but after several requests, she opened it to the public.
Photograph by Martha Williams
Photograph by Martha Williams
Photograph by Martha Williams
Weerasin says she sources pieces with chefs in mind, collaborating with them on the right textures and weights for their serving dishes and explaining how each aspect might factor into the guest and server experience. “Each restaurant has a different concept, [so] I try to consult and recommend different types of ceramic, stone, clay, and porcelain,” she says.
Her industrial shelves are filled with a wide range of items, from the expected (plates, bowls, cups) to the unusual (sushi boats, matcha bowls, coffee pour-overs). Other offbeat items include an elephant-shaped mug, a peapod cutlery rest, and animal-shaped chopstick rests, located by the register. Customers looking for well-priced gifts for weddings, birthdays, and housewarmings can find dish sets and colorful wine glasses for less than $15.
Popular picks include “donut bowls”—large, shallow pieces that allow for creative plating and are especially popular for serving tasting menus. These bowls, which retail for $39.95 each, also offer a way to pair texture and color with the dishes; for home entertaining, they make a table look grander.
Weerasin’s favorite pieces for first-time shoppers: beautiful drinkware with a drip-style glaze. The glass glaze, known as nagashi (Japanese for “flowing”), is fired at more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which produces a natural crackle effect. “It’s very unique,” she says.
This article appears in our June 2026 issue.
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ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) — A semi-truck collided with a train overnight on the city’s southwest side, sparking a fire in the wreckage.
No injuries have been reported as authorities have yet to locate the driver of the tractor-trailer. No occupants were found on the train either, according to Atlanta Fire Rescue.
Crews responded to reports of a vehicle fire just before 4 a.m. at the intersection of Lee and Spark streets in southwest Atlanta.
When first responders arrived, they encountered a tractor-trailer afire after being struck by a train. Firefighters worked to put out the flames in the cab, trailer as well as on debris strewn about the railroad and roadway, Atlanta Fire Rescue told Atlanta News First.
Crews have not identified any hazardous materials in the wreckage.
An investigation is ongoing as no occupants were found in the tractor-trailer, train or surrounding area, authorities said.
Norfolk Southern and MARTA briefly halted operations in the area as police activity and cleanup continued.
The crash happened just below elevated MARTA rail tracks which run between the West End and Oakland City transit stations.
MARTA said that it had requested a bus bridge to transport riders between Oakland City and West End Stations “due to police activity” until further notice.
The transit agency was also offering riders Uber and Lyft credits for rail travel involving the Lakewood, Oakland City, West End and Garnett stations.
This is a developing story. Please stay with Atlanta News First as we learn more.
Copyright 2026 WANF. All rights reserved.
“I am at this point where I can’t imagine not going,” Wilkins-Mickey said. “Every year I learn something new. Of course they add different experiences everything we go, so it really does feel different every time, but I want to learn. I want to continue to learn. This is our culture, it’s our history and I would like to continue to understand why we are where we are today. And I think the only way to do that is to understand our past. Every time I go, I just feel so inspired. It gives me purpose to do the work that I do.”
The trip starts with a flight from Seattle to Atlanta where the group has their first glimpse of what to expect for the rest of their week. The group was given a tour of an area of downtown Atlanta called “Sweet Auburn Ave.” which was once a booming community and neighborhood, filled with businesses, that was systemically dismantled by a highway that was built through the neighborhood. Businesses and families were forced to leave.
Keenan Allen Ladd, one of three educators on the tour said, “I really just appreciated the educators in those moments, because they take you through the whole story of the major moments that happened in the Civil Rights Movement.”
The rest of that first day was spent at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park, his birth home and other sites in Atlanta before making the drive to the neighboring state of Alabama to visit Anniston, where the Freedom Riders boarded a bus at the Greyhound station and which was attacked by a group of white supremacist,
The group spent the remainder of their trip in different cities in Alabama, including Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma.
While in Montgomery, the group visited the Montgomery riverfront, a location where enslaved people were brought off of boats and taken to the city’s downtown area to be auctioned off.
Leann Coates, Seahawks premium service representative, described the experience as shocking.
“It’s very powerful to be standing there at the riverfront, and know that not long ago, people were brought on ships and sold. That street is still called commerce street. Things have not changed in the way you think they have changed.”
While the group was in Montgomery, one of the locations they visited was the Legacy Museum, a museum that immerses visitors in the history of Black Americans from the Transatlantic slave trade all the way through to present day and mass incarceration.
And while the actual tour of the South was just five days, the journey doesn’t stop there. Ladd said he immediately returned to his classroom and thought about ways to get his students involved and educated on the topics he learned about on the tour. Allen Ladd said he utilized the one thing he knows all of his students use, social media, specifically Tik Tok and Instagram reels, to help the students learn information in a natural way.
“When I got back, I actually had them all take out their phones and go on Tik Tok and look up the Institute for Common Power, just so they could see that experience first-hand. We did that for like two days. By the third day, a lot of their algorithm’s changes and they were able to get real life information that they weren’t getting before.”
He added, “This tour furthers my want, urge and that yearning to make sure I’m standing up for everyone who doesn’t have the opportunity to utilize their voice, to just amplify voices. There’s a lot of people that we’ve learned on this trip, this Truth and Purpose, to utilize your voice for the voice of others. And that’s something that I’m going to do… I’m in a unique position as an educator. I have the opportunity to guide or facilitate youth, and I have an opportunity to open the eyes of our youth and I have something that is precious… I want to make sure they have the correct information. I don’t want to steer them in a particular direction, but I definitely want to put the correct information in front of them, so they can understand what this country looked like previously, to give them a vision of what they believe this country should look like moving forward in the future.”
A lot of the participants come away from the trip feeling a sense of community, empowered and are more enlightened about the history of Black Americans than they were before.
Learn more about the Truth and Purpose tour and the organization, the Institute for Common Power, that spearheads this trip here.
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