Brent Chesanek grew up around soccer. He lived and breathed it as a youngster in Florida where he had dreams of a professional career involving the world’s game. His reality did not quite meet those whimsical thoughts, but he is returning to his first love with his latest feature film.

“Academy,” directed by Chesanek, is a “documentary study of the training lives of elite American soccer players through their competitive years and beyond.”

“I’ve been making movies in New York for over 10 years,” Chesanek told TopDrawerSoccer.com on Thursday. “My first feature film was very art house, and I wanted something more universal [with my second].”

With “Academy,” he finds that mass appeal as the film focuses on the world’s most popular sport. The central theme of the documentary is the steps to a professional contract and the life after a soccer career.

New York club team Smithtown Arsenal takes up part of the story about the groundwork of dedication and practice in elite soccer. Smithtown is the defending USYS Boys National Championship in the boys U16 age group. However, that success is not what drew Chesanek to the club.

“It didn’t matter that they were the national champions,” he said. “It was about what would make the most interesting story.”

Smithtown is a rarity in how the team is constructed. With the core group forming many years ago and the staying intact over the seasons, Smithtown represents something more than the on field success the squad has enjoyed.  

“The kids are all friends and I wanted something with more of a homegrown feel where all the kids grew up together,” Chesanek explained. “I really liked this about the team. They came up together as one.”

In New York, there are hundreds of successful clubs that stretch a wide range of acronym-heavy leagues in the U.S. Soccer pyramid. Smithtown stood out to Chesanek and others associated with the film, but he recognizes that it is just one of the many stories worth telling.

“There are so many soccer stories,” he said. “We could do an HBO series on these soccer stories, but we had to pick one.”

Smithtown is only a part of the film. Chesanek is also planning to feature players in England on the quest to a professional contract as well as players who have exited the game and moved onto their next steps in life.

Right now, Wolverhampton Wanders are locked in as one of the academies that the film will feature. There are a couple of others in the work as well. Chesanek’s goal is to show how the system operates at English academies.

In essence, that’s his overreaching theme for all of the subjects that he features.

“I’m all about the experience and not the information,” he explained. “One or two bits of context and then let’s be with them. I want to experience everything . . . more of an emotional state.”

Chesanek’s unique perspective as a director offers a film that soccer (and sports) documentaries have not seen in the past.

“We are going to watch a display of commitment and work ethic that is usually sensationalized or takes a back seat,” he explained. “Academy takes a more straight-forward approach to look at the essence of practice.”

With the montage sequences scrubbed, “Academy” portrays a real look into soccer at an elite level in both the U.S. club soccer and English academy level.

Chesanek plans to finish up shooting in the fall and hopes the film will be ready in early 2015 to make the festival circuit. Currently, the project has an indiegogo campaign to help with the finances for the British portion of the film. Learn more about the documentary and contribute to its cause here.