By Toxlay Sports Editorial Team · Last updated October 23, 2026
🌲 Portland Hearts of Pine Fans — Lead With Your Heart!
Maine’s first pro club, a sold-out Fitzy every week and the most beloved story in the lower leagues. Green and navy hoops, full voice — this is the season to wear the Hearts’ colors.
The Club
Portland Hearts of Pine — Maine’s first professional soccer club — were awarded a USL League One franchise in September 2023, unveiled their name and crest in April 2024 and played a first season in 2025 that became American lower-league soccer’s phenomenon. Founder Gabe Hoffman-Johnson built the club with the community, literally: the crest — a pine tree and waves inside the starburst of the Seal of Maine, with a red Dirigo Heart at its center — was designed with dozens of local creatives, and the supporters’ group, the Dirigo Union, was founded in 2020, before the club itself existed.
Home is Fitzpatrick Stadium — “Fitzy” — a city-owned ground dating to 1930 that the club renovated before its debut. Listings give 6,300 seats; Portland set a USL League One record crowd of 6,440 there in October 2025 and averaged a league-best 5,829 in its first season, with every listed 2026 home crowd above 6,000. The ground is effectively sold out every week, powered by the Dirigo Union and Moxie the Moose.
Head coach Bobby Murphy, the club’s inaugural coach and sporting director, remains in charge. The motto says everything about the project: “Lead With Your Heart,” a play on Maine’s state motto, Dirigo — “I lead.”
The honest footnote: Portland have never won a trophy — no title, no Shield, no cup, not yet. The story of this club is its crowds, its community and two playoff seasons of near-glory. The silverware is the next chapter, and everyone in Maine knows it.
⭐ FAN FAVORITE
#10 Wright — Portland Hearts of Pine Style Jersey
$59.99
The face of the club in the Woods & Water hoops. A Player of the Month, the first playoff winner in club history — the shirt of Maine’s soccer story, made for Hearts fans.
Last Season (2025): The Dream Debut
An expansion club with no history became a sensation. Portland finished seventh — 11 wins, 12 draws, seven defeats, 45 points — with a league-leading average home attendance of 5,829, more than double the league norm, and 18 sold-out home matches. Then the playoffs: on November 1, 2025, the No. 7 seed went to No. 2 seed Chattanooga and won 1–0, Ollie Wright scoring at 55 minutes and goalkeeper Hunter Morse making nine saves. The semifinal at Spokane finished 2–2 — Portland lost the shootout 6–5, one kick short of the Final.
The Open Cup wrote the other famous chapter: Portland’s first-ever match was a 4–0 win over CD Faialense (Walter Varela scored the club’s first-ever goal), and in Round 2 came the giant-killing — down to ten men, behind in extra time to USL Championship side Hartford Athletic, Jake Keegan chipped a 117th-minute equalizer and Portland won the shootout 4–2. Masashi Wada and Nathan Messer made the All-League First Team, Wright the Second Team as the club’s top scorer in all competitions with 13, and Morse led the league in saves. A dream first year by any expansion standard.
Best Players Right Now
Ollie Wright — #10, midfielder/forward. The face of the club: USL League One Player of the Month for May 2026, the team’s assists leader, and its creative heartbeat from the left. In 2025 he was the club’s top scorer in all competitions with 13 goals and scored in both playoff games — including the quarterfinal winner at Chattanooga. The first name on the team sheet, and the third captain in the armband rotation.
Diego Gonzalez — #16, attacking midfielder. The mid-season rescue act: signed on loan from Houston Dynamo 2 in June 2026 after a broken tibia cost him almost a year, and finished as Portland’s top scorer with nine league goals — including a goal from midfield at One Knoxville in August. A 2024 MLS NEXT Pro Best XI pick who changed the Hearts’ season.
JayTee Kamara — #11, winger. The Sierra Leone international is a second-season spark: he scored in the 2025 playoff semifinal at Spokane, made the Team of the Week in May 2026, and scored Portland’s goal in the September game against Sarasota. Pace, flair and a new number — 11, after wearing 80 in the debut season.
Masashi Wada — #77, midfielder. The Japanese playmaker was an All-League First Team pick in 2025, sharing the team lead with nine league goals, and scored Portland’s first-ever goal at Fitzpatrick Stadium in May 2025. His 2026 was quieter, but he remains the squad’s most decorated name.
Titus Washington — #14, forward. The club staff’s co-Rookie of the Year in 2025 — five league goals and three assists as a rookie out of Seattle University — and a regular starter again in 2026, scoring in the USL Cup draw at Westchester in April.
Hunter Morse — #1, goalkeeper. The league’s saves leader in 2025, hero of the Hartford Open Cup shootout and of the nine-save playoff win at Chattanooga. First-choice keeper throughout 2026 behind a leaky defense — and busier than anyone wanted him to be.
Star Spotlight
The halfway-line goal. August 19, 2026, at One Knoxville: Diego Gonzalez scored from midfield in a 1–1 draw at Covenant Health Park — the signature moment of his loan spell, two months after arriving from Houston Dynamo 2 following a year lost to a broken tibia. Gonzalez finished the season as Portland’s top scorer. Comeback stories do not come better than this one.
Ollie Wright, Player of the Month. Wright was voted USL League One Player of the Month for May 2026 — the creative peak of Portland’s season. The same month, he converted the penalty in the May 16 USL Cup win over USL Championship side Rhode Island FC, 2–1 at Fitzpatrick before 6,307 fans. When the Hearts beat a team from the division above, Wright is usually at the center of it.
The Spokane rescue. October 3, trailing away at Spokane Velocity, Portland came back to draw 3–3 — Gonzalez at 62 minutes, Felipe Rodríguez-Gentile at 64 and Aboubacar Camara at 73, three goals in an 11-minute burst. The best result of a difficult autumn, and a reminder of what this attack can do when it clicks.
🔥 More Fan Favorites
More Hearts stars, same woods and water hoops.
This Season (2026): The Difficult Second Album
Portland sit 14th — seven wins, 10 draws, 14 defeats, 31 points — and eliminated from the playoff race. The second-season slump was real: the attack stayed productive with 44 goals, but 57 conceded is among the league’s worst marks, and a long winless late-summer run (no league win since September 13 against AV Alta) ended the race early. The winter losses explain much of it: All-League left back Nathan Messer was transferred up to Charleston in February, captain Patrick Langlois and Open Cup hero Jake Keegan both departed, and marquee signing Emiliano Terzaghi — the league’s all-time top scorer — arrived in January and left for Sarasota in June after four appearances.
What never wavered was Maine. Every listed home crowd topped 6,000, the Gonzalez loan delivered a top scorer and a halfway-line goal for the ages, and Wright’s Player of the Month award marked the attack’s ceiling. The cups offered flashes — a USL Cup win over Rhode Island FC from the division above — even as the Open Cup ended in a first-round derby defeat at Vermont Green. The finale is a farewell: the Shield winners come to Fitzy, and the Dirigo Union will sing like it is a final anyway.
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Mark Your Calendar
Saturday, October 24, 2026 — vs Charlotte Independence, Fitzpatrick Stadium (5:00 p.m. ET). The regular-season finale. Portland are eliminated, but the visitors are the 2026 Players’ Shield winners, so the finale pairs Maine’s farewell to its second season with the champions’ coronation weekend — and Fitzy will be full, loud and in no mood to applaud politely. Tickets via heartsofpine.com.
October 30 – November 1, 2026 — the USL League One Playoffs begin. Portland will watch this year: the top eight advance to single-elimination quarterfinals that weekend, with semifinals on November 6–8 and the Final in the November 13–15 window. Charlotte Independence took the Shield with 66 points. For the Hearts, season three starts with one aim — be back in this picture, at home, in front of the Union.
Biggest Rivalries — The Wars
1. Westchester SC — the fellow-expansion feud. Portland are geographically isolated — the only League One club in New England — so the closest thing to a real rivalry is the other 2025 expansion story. The games have been wild from the start: a 2–2 draw in October 2025 that clinched Portland’s first playoff berth, a 2–2 USL Cup draw in April 2026 (Westchester won the shootout), a 5–1 defeat in June — Portland’s biggest of 2026 — and a 2–1 home win in September, Gonzalez’s penalty and Camara’s winner sending Fitzy home happy.
2. New York Cosmos — the new Northeast name. The famous name’s return brought instant heat in 2026. Portland won the league meeting 3–1 at Fitzpatrick in May — Kamara at 10 minutes and a Wright brace — and the USL Cup rematch in July finished 1–1, Portland winning the shootout 4–2. Portland also played the role of spoiler on the Cosmos’ homecoming day, winning the Hinchliffe opener 3–1 in March.
3. Rhode Island FC — the regional cup war. Not a league fixture — RIFC play in the USL Championship — but the most charged regional matchup Portland have. Rhode Island ended the Hearts’ 2025 Open Cup run and beat them 4–1 in the 2025 USL Cup, Portland’s biggest defeat of that year. Payback came on May 16, 2026: a 2–1 USL Cup win at Fitzpatrick, Matteo Kidd early and Wright’s penalty, before 6,307 fans. Add Vermont Green FC as the emerging neighbor — Vermont knocked Portland out of the 2026 Open Cup, 1–0 in Burlington in March — and New England’s soccer map is filling in nicely.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do Portland Hearts of Pine play, and what is the stadium like?
Fitzpatrick Stadium, known as Fitzy, at 140 Deering Avenue in Portland, Maine — a city-owned stadium dating to 1930 that the club renovated, with new turf, lights and locker rooms, before its 2025 debut. Listings give 6,300 seats; Portland set a USL League One record crowd of 6,440 there on October 21, 2025, and averaged a league-best 5,829 in its first season — the ground is effectively sold out every week, powered by the Dirigo Union supporters.
Who is Portland Hearts of Pine’s best player?
Ollie Wright, No. 10 — the club’s creative star, top scorer in all competitions in the inaugural season with 13 goals, scorer of the first playoff winner in club history, and USL League One’s Player of the Month for May 2026. In pure 2026 production, loan signing Diego Gonzalez, No. 16, topped the scoring charts with nine league goals after arriving in June.
What trophies have Portland Hearts of Pine won?
None yet — the club only began play in 2025. Its best results are a USL League One playoff semifinal in its inaugural 2025 season, including a road quarterfinal win at Chattanooga, and a third-round U.S. Open Cup run in 2025 highlighted by a penalty-shootout upset of USL Championship side Hartford Athletic.
How can I get tickets or watch Portland Hearts of Pine?
Tickets are sold through heartsofpine.com — demand far outstrips supply, with the club reporting sell-outs across its inaugural home schedule, a 98% season-ticket renewal rate for 2026 and a 3,000-person waitlist, so the club shop and resale are realistic routes. Matches stream on ESPN+ and ESPN Select, with regional TV coverage on NESN in New England.
🌲 Portland Hearts of Pine Fan Shop
The full Hearts trio — Wright, Gonzalez and Kamara in green and navy.
Sources & official links: Portland Hearts of Pine official site · USL League One official site · Portland Hearts of Pine tickets
Green and navy hoops, full voice, hearts on sleeves — lead with your heart, Portland.
Published for Portland Hearts of Pine fans — October 2026
