Tom Stone, who led the Atlanta Beat to the inaugural WUSA championship in 2001, has been named the women's head coach at Texas Tech, where he succeeds Neil McGuire, who left to become the California women's coach.

Stone, the first coach hired in WUSA, had the best winning percentage of any coach in the league and was selected as the WUSA All-Star Game coach in 2001 and 2003. Mostly recently, he was an assistant at Clemson and also worked as the technical director of the Top Hat Soccer Club in Atlanta.

Stone played on Duke's 1986 NCAA Division I championship team, scoring the gamewinner in the final against Akron. He later played in the A-League for the Washington Stars and Colorado Foxes. He was the founding director of coaching at the Colorado Rush and helped build it into one of the first big clubs in the country.

"I am very excited to bring my family here and to help build this program at Texas Tech," said Stone. "When the opportunity to look at Texas Tech began, it became clear very quickly that the support that Texas Tech is giving women's soccer really puts you in position as a coaching staff to make some good things happen."