When Rand Getlin, BA ’06 (political science), and Janina Pelayo, BS ’06 (business administration), first launched production of a series on the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team (USMNT), they were betting on themselves.
The couple, who are founders of independent production company Park Stories, started filming in May 2022, with no guarantee the self-funded project would be picked up. They also knew little about soccer, but saw the potential for powerful human-interest stories.
“At first, we weren’t looking at it like soccer experts. We were looking at people: young guys leaving home at incredibly young ages, families making sacrifices, and players carrying expectations that most adults would struggle with. [We saw] a group trying to change the way the country sees their sport while a home World Cup kept getting closer,” they said.
Initially, the market didn’t see the potential that Getlin and Pelayo did. They said every buyer passed on the project. Simultaneously, the players and families they were following continued to stay engaged and tell their stories.
“At some point, stopping would have felt like the only real failure. We had pushed all our chips into the middle of the table, and we felt a responsibility to see it through.”
Fortunately, Getlin and Pelayo’s gamble paid off. The USMNT’s match against England in the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 became the most-watched men’s soccer match on American English-language television, showing Americans have an appetite for the world’s sport.
Park Stories reached a deal with HBO in 2023. U.S. Against the World: Four Years with the Men's National Soccer Team, a five-part docuseries, debuted on the network and its streaming service on May 12, 2026. The final episode releases on June 9—just in time for the USMNT’s opening match in the FIFA World Cup 2026 against Paraguay on June 12. Getlin and Pelayo are the series’ executive producers, and Getlin is a director, as well.
“For four years, this moment was always out there in the distance,” they said. “Every shoot, every camp, every match, every edit, every hard conversation was pointed in this direction.”
Life on the road
The journey to sharing this story with the world wasn’t always an easy one. Over four years, production for U.S. Against the World included 300 shoot days, stops in 67 cities and 12 countries, and 37 live matches. Getlin and Pelayo describe life on a traveling production crew as less glamorous than it sounds.
“A lot of it is airports, hotels, rental cars, hard drives, call sheets, production calls, edit reviews, and answering emails from a laptop in the back of a van,” they said. “You’re constantly switching gears. One minute you’re solving logistics. The next minute you’re trying to be present enough to recognize when something real is happening in front of you.”
The couple recalled a 17-day stretch across the United Kingdom and France, during which they had back-to-back interviews with players and their families, including Tyler Adams, Tim Weah, and Chris Richards. With many USMNT players competing for European clubs, filming required extensive travel and often complex logistics.
“The cost is that you give up a lot of normal life. The privilege is that you get trusted into rooms and moments most people never see.”
Getting to know the players and their families on a personal level has been one of the most rewarding aspects of the project, Getlin and Pelayo said. They first met Adams when working on a different project, before they embarked on U.S. Against the World. They said witnessing his first year at German club RB Leipzig and learning what he overcame to get there opened their eyes to the global impact of the sport.
“One of our biggest hopes for the series was always that people would see the players as human beings before the country asks everything of them . . . The human part matters as much as the soccer.”
Two Ducks on nonlinear paths
Before they were traveling the globe producing an HBO series, Pelayo and Getlin were two Ducks building their own unique careers and getting to know each other.
Getlin, who majored in political science at the University of Oregon, said Professor Ken DeBevoise’s classes were especially formative in pushing him to think critically about the world. Pelayo said an internship with University of Oregon Athletics and Oregon Football shaped the way she thinks as a creative and businessperson, teaching her how to push boundaries, find resources, and build a team.
The UO is also where Pelayo and Getlin first met through mutual friends—though it wouldn’t be until a few years after graduation that they’d get to know each other better. The two started exchanging letters while Getlin was finishing law school at the University of Southern California and Pelayo was working for her family’s staffing company in Manila, Philippines.
“For three or four months, our relationship existed almost entirely in words: long messages about life, work, ambition, family, and what we were both trying to build. There was something special about that. Written communication makes you slow down,” they said.
The couple went on their first date in December 2009 and have been together ever since.
After graduating from law school, Getlin worked for Yahoo! Sports and NFL Media as a reporter and NFL insider. Pelayo worked in a variety of marketing and operations roles—both for her family’s company, JS Contractor, and several media and staffing companies in the US.
The couple founded Park Stories in 2017, bringing together their shared passion for storytelling and the unique skills that make a production like U.S. Against the World possible.
“At the time, none of it looked connected, but almost everything we did before Park Stories ended up mattering,” they said. “Park Stories is really the combination of both of our backgrounds, both of our instincts, and a shared belief that the human part of a story matters as much as anything else.”
Looking ahead and dreaming big
As the USMNT prepares for the FIFA World Cup 2026, Pelayo and Getlin said they’re grateful for the players and their families who trusted them with their stories and for the chance to produce a series that felt true to their lived experience. Most of all, they’re excited for people to connect with the team through U.S. Against the World.
“Whether someone has followed the USMNT for years or barely knows the sport, we hope the series helps them understand who these guys are, where they come from, what they’ve been through, and how badly they want to make the country proud.”
As Getlin and Pelayo look to the future of Park Stories, they said U.S. Against the World has raised the standard for everything they want to pursue moving forward. They’re eager to tell more sports-related stories, but are most interested in authentically showcasing the power of the human spirit, whether through sport or another medium.
“Sports are our deepest area of expertise, but we don’t think the work is limited to sports,” they said. “We’re interested in stories . . . that cannot be rushed, stories that help people see the person on the screen more clearly.”
—By April Miller, UO Alumni Association interim director of communications