— Within the genre of sports documentaries, those chronicling women’s soccer typically focus on national teams and players, often in preparation for the World Cup or Olympics.

Few have exclusively embarked on the roller coaster milieu of American women’s professional club soccer, including its latest incarnation, the National Women’s Soccer League.

A noteworthy new entry is in the works that hopes to engage soccer audiences. If you’ve seen an inordinate number of handheld cameras and boom mics hovering around the North Carolina Courage this year, they’re part of a filmmaking crew documenting the Courage’s 2018 season for a multi-part docuseries tentatively slated for release early next year.

The project is a joint venture between Verizon, NWSL Media, and Film 45, a non-scripted entertainment production company co-founded by acclaimed filmmaker Peter Berg, who directed such feature films as Friday Night Lights, Lone Survivor, and Deepwater Horizon.

“We’re looking for ways and opportunities to tell our story; we’re looking for ways to test ourselves,” says Curt Johnson, president and general manager of the Courage. “So, the bottom line is to grow our fanbase, and we feel like being aggressive in telling our story is something we need to do every day. When this came across, this was right in line with that mentality.”

The docuseries’ working title is Goal Line, with The Squad: North Carolina Courage also being considered. Brandon Carroll, a producer and partner at Film 45, says filming will conclude at the end of the 2018 NWSL season, and the current plan is to produce eight episodes each running approximately thirty minutes, that will be released in early 2019 on a broadcast platform still to be determined. While specifics about the film’s financing weren't revealed, Carroll says the total budget for the project is north of seven figures.

“What Verizon/Oath Network is putting into this is competitive with an HBO or Netflix or Amazon kind of budget,” Carroll says. “We’re creating what we hope is premium storytelling, as far as production value and talent.”

Evan Silverman, the acting general manager for NWSL Media, says the league has been eager to do a docuseries involving the NWSL.

“We obviously have a partnership with Verizon, since they have the exclusive streaming rights in the U.S. to NWSL games,” says Silverman, who is also the executive vice president of digital media for A+E Networks. “When [Verizon] told us they had a potential deal to work with Peter Berg and Film 45, we were extremely excited just given the quality of the production that Film 45 has done in the past.”

Film 45 has produced a couple of sports-related docuseries for Verizon in recent years: QB1: Beyond the Lights, a 10-part series about three of the nation’s top high school quarterbacks, and Road to Race Day, which chronicles the inner workings of Hendrick Motorsports. The success of those series, particularly QB1, paved the way for a women’s soccer documentary, according to Carroll.

“The Verizon team came to us and said, look, we have a relationship with the NWSL, we are sharing the broadcast rights with Lifetime Network, and we’d love to do a series where we’d follow one or more of the [NWSL] teams,” Carroll says. “We immediately responded that we thought this would be an incredible opportunity to tell a story that we haven’t been able to tell before, one set in the world of soccer, and more specifically the world of women’s soccer.”

Film 45’s approach on QB1 was to take three different subjects and interweave their stories into each episode. Indeed, the initial plan for the NWSL documentary was to follow and chronicle multiple teams. Silverman says he and the film’s producers initially contacted and communicated with four or five NWSL clubs, anticipating the docuseries would ultimately feature three.

“But as we investigated and spoke to teams, it became clear that North Carolina would be the perfect team for this series, for a variety of reasons,” Silverman says. “One, they’re a great mix of players and personalities. You have an outspoken coach. You’ve got a diverse group of players. You have a team that’s clearly top-notch and obviously they’ve had an incredible season, but even leading into the season we knew they were going to be near the top of the table. And also, I think given the way the championship played out last year, we just thought North Carolina was going to have a strong season and be a real interesting group of players and coaches to follow. So, we made the decision to feature one team, to feature the Courage, instead of shooting with multiple teams.”

Once approached by Film 45 about participating in the project, the Courage staff assembled background information about the Courage players and coaches, tidbits they thought would prove compelling in a docuseries setting.

“At first we talked about [the QB1] approach here and thought what if we highlight different athletes in the NWSL,” Carroll says. “Then we realized, as we went to visit some of these teams, there was just something undeniable about the North Carolina Courage’s chemistry. The team dynamics were just really exciting to us. [North Carolina Courage manager] Paul Riley was just wonderful. Everyone from the top down was very, very welcoming to us and excited for the opportunity. For documentary filmmakers, it’s paramount to have access and trust in allowing our cameras in.”

Cementing that trust fell to executive producers Allison Berg (no relation to Peter) and Sandra Alvarez. Berg says she leapt at the chance to helm her first sports-related film project.

“For me, documentaries are all about character,” says Berg, who is also the film’s showrunner. “I also really like to shine a light on stories that I feel like really haven’t gotten the attention they deserve yet. So to do something about soccer in the United States, but especially about a women’s team when they’ve been incredibly successful as a team and as players, but don’t have that much national attention on them yet, felt like a really good opportunity to not only do something about the sport but also about the team, the individuals, and the sacrifice involved.”

For Riley, the project represented a wider opportunity to both memorialize and instruct.

“I’ve always wanted to catalog a season,” Riley says. “I feel like this catalogs what we do day-in, day-out. It gives coaches throughout the country a perspective on the professional women’s game. It’s exciting for people, to think that our team is going to be viewed from the inside out, from video sessions to pregame talks, halftime talks, post-game talks, and practices. These coaches get a huge insight into what we do and what we think.”

Berg and her film crew began filming during the Courage’s preseason training camp. They have been in and out of Cary throughout the season, even traveling to several road games, including recent matches at Portland and Houston.

“The first day that you walk in [the team] might be excited, but they have questions and they’re not quite how this is going to work yet,” Berg says. “It’s different than when a journalist is going to come in and do just one interview and then leave. We’re doing something that we want to build over time, so [the team] gets to know us, they get to know the crew, and in a sense it’s a collaboration. When they see that we respect them and their process, they open up more.”

While everyone on the Courage was initially conscious of the film crew’s presence, Riley says that has dissipated over time.

“Me and the coaching staff, we talk openly,” Riley says. “Sometimes players come in and talk to me, and I forget I’m miked. They’ll say, Paul, this is what happened with the national team, or this is what happened in practice, or what do you think of the game this weekend. It’s just an open conversation. I don’t say, 'Oh, I’m mic'd up.' I just let it go.”

Berg also employed the services of an all-women film crew, a choice that was both logistical and symbolic.

“When people see us on the field filming, they get excited,” Berg says. “Those little girls who are excited to see the players out there notice that we’re all-female, too. I feel like that has an impact … Almost every player on the team said something to us about it at the first or second shoot, that they were really happy to see.”

Riley says no setting has been off-limits.

“They’ve been in our locker room. They’ve been with me and the coaching staff discussing the games, tactics, and players. They’ve been with the players in their home settings, cooking and going to movies and whatever else they do. I have a good relationship with them. I enjoy it, and honestly, I don't think about it. I want them to get an honest account of what this season is like," he said.

Nevertheless, there were certain boundaries that the film crew needed to navigate and respect. Johnson says the Courage players were actively consulted from the beginning on whether they’d like to participate in the project.

“We went to them and asked their feelings about it, and they had some questions about boundaries and related things," Johnson said. "We talked through that, so it’s an ongoing kind of discussion around where the boundaries are at.”

“The one thing that’s been very different for me is that this is a project where there’s so many people who are working so incredibly hard, so you really need to respect the time that they need to rest,” Berg says. “You’re working within the schedule that they need to work within, and I respect that. So there’s something very different about athletes, where they’ve given us incredible access and we’re very grateful for that, but you just can’t schedule a bunch of time following them around when they need their rest.”

Berg was also attracted to her and Film 45’s mutual desire to adhere to a cinema verite construct. “We don’t have an outside narrator. This isn’t a look from the outside in. We’re giving people an opportunity to share their lives through this series, and we’re the lucky ones to capture it," she said.

All the entities involved in this project, from the production company to the league to the Courage, see varying benefits to this comprehensive endeavor.

“We think it’s a great opportunity to have a top-notch production company tell the stories of these women,” Silverman says. “It brings added exposure to the league. It brings added exposure to the Courage. It shows the players in a light that many people may not see. The series is a lot about what it’s like to play in the best professional women’s soccer league in the world, but it also reveals a lot about their lives off the pitch and what it takes to be a professional soccer player in the NWSL.”

“It’s probably an eye-opener for anybody watching it because it tells the truth of what happened through seven or eight months of sweat, blood, and tears,” Riley says. “It’s got everything in it. There’s no holds barred.”

“Three words that keep coming up are sacrifice, dedication, and passion,” Berg says. “So we felt like if we could find a team that we felt had a great chemistry on their own but was comfortable allowing us into their lives, that we could create something really special together.”