What this project is about.
Merced United built a second program inside its soccer club: a Leadership Academy. Piloted with the 2008 girls, the academy takes players off the field and into their own city — sessions at local businesses, at City Hall, and at UC Merced, plus financial-education basics: how a credit score works, opening a bank account, FAFSA, résumés. The club president's own story is the reason it exists: Jovan Pulido, born and raised in Merced, tells on camera how a kidney-transplant history and years of dialysis led, through an unasked-for recreational coaching signup by a nephew, to running the club — and to building, with Vice President Christopher Michael Burton, a program modeled on what the world's great youth academies wrap around the football: schooling, structure, formation. The academy is city-grant funded.
How the work was made.
Film the program while it is working, not staged for the camera. The evening was built around the academy rather than around the shoot: interviews first, then a real academy business session with the players, then downtown b-roll as the light went. Because the session was real, the players on camera are mid-conversation with a business owner they know — their own team manager. A short narration track does the geography (businesses, city government, a university, financial basics) so the interviews can stay personal.
The making of it.
- Role
- Directed, filmed, and edited by Leomar Moring; Sean Ayres crewed
- Shoot
- Tuesday, May 28, 2024, 4:00–8:30 p.m., downtown Merced (523 W Main St) — interviews, a live academy business session with players, and b-roll
- Voices
- Jovan Pulido (club president), George Olivares (2008 girls head coach), Kylie Fimbros (team manager, downtown boutique owner, former Merced United player)
On location.
The session filmed was held at Kylie Fimbros's downtown boutique — a manager who is also a former player, assistant-coaching her daughter's team, hosting the current players in her own business. That layering is the academy's argument made visible: representation and local pathways, not a lecture about them. Coach George Olivares describes, on camera, players who communicate and connect better since the academy started, and quieter players coming out of their shells — presented in the film as his observation, and kept that way here.
The films.
Community Spotlight: Merced United Leadership Academy
Community Spotlight: Merced United Leadership Academy (7:16). Published by NorCal Premier Soccer on July 24, 2025. Read the field note: Merced United Leadership Academy
Where the work goes.
Purpose (verified): the film shows what a club can build beyond soccer, and is explicitly an invitation — the people in it return to the point that other clubs could start versions of this, beginning small, with one team. For a prospective member club, a city partner, or a funder, it makes that case in the program's own voices.
