By the time the last of the supporters have filed out of Fitzpatrick Stadium, Hannah Sirois still has hours of work ahead of her.
As the vice president of fan experience for Portland Hearts of Pine, a USL League One men’s team, Sirois is usually the last person to leave the stadium on matchdays. When kickoff is at 7 or 7:30 p.m., she sometimes doesn’t leave Fitzpatrick — or Fitzy, as locals call it — until 12:30 or 1 in the morning. Fitzpatrick is a multi-use facility, meaning that nearly everything that makes a Hearts of Pine game truly feel like a Hearts of Pine game — the local vendors’ kiosks, the kids’ activities and the other matchday attractions — has to be set up before kickoff and then packed away afterward.
It might sound like a tremendous amount of work for a third-division soccer club in Portland, Maine, because it is. But the results have been extraordinary. Since beginning play in 2025, the Hearts of Pine has become something of a local phenomenon, attracting thousands of supporters on a regular basis to Fitzy and building a following that extends well beyond Maine (at a recent match, American soccer legend Landon Donovan was in attendance, taking oyster shots with the club’s owners). The game-day atmosphere feels less like a typical lower-division sporting event and more like a spirited community gathering, with supporters showing up week after week regardless of how the club is faring.
And now, Sirois and her colleagues are preparing to do it all over again next spring, when the Maine Wildness, a women’s team, makes its debut in the pre-professional USL W League. The new club will exist under the same umbrella foundation as Hearts of Pine but will be looking to build an identity and audience of its own. And if the early response to the Maine Wildness is any indication, the appetite for the W League will be even greater than the club anticipated.
Within an hour of the opening sale for Maine Wildness season tickets, 5,000 packages were sold. And an even more revealing number emerged — 80% of those buying the ticket packages were not already men’s season-ticket holders, but were new fans. The Maine Wildness isn’t simply inheriting the Hearts of Pine loyal following, it would appear. Instead, it seems ready to bring a different, but equally enthusiastic, audience into the fold.
“We’ve absolutely found this new demographic,” Sirois said in an interview with The IX Sports.
Doing so matters a lot for the brains behind the Maine Wildness. They don’t want to simply build a team that benefits from the success of the Hearts of Pine, as stunning as that has been. They want to be their own thing, although they will for sure be using the Hearts of Pine as a model.
After all, the Hearts of Pine’s rise has been unusual, particularly when you consider that it plays in the hardly-glamorous third tier of men’s professional soccer in the U.S.
For Deanna Scherrer, the creative director of Maine Wildness, the explanation for all the interest has less to do with soccer, as popular as the sport has become, and more to do with the way Hearts of Pine has placed itself within the community.
Scherrer, who previously worked in marketing in Boise, Idaho, for the USL League One club Boise FC, had been following the Hearts of Pine before she joined the organization. She believes its success teaches a great lesson about the potential of smaller sports markets. Major American sports franchises, she argues, have to compete loudly for attention and take on truly elaborate marketing campaigns to distinguish themselves.
“They’re fighting to catch your attention, rather than earn your attention,” Scherrer said of those major franchises.
Hearts of Pine has taken a different approach. In Portland, Scherrer sees a club that has made the community itself the centerpiece of its identity. Rather than simply promoting the team and focusing on several of the best players, Hearts of Pine tells stories about the people who support the team — from local residents who sell coffee and lobster rolls at the game to the familiar faces who fill the stands each week, including the rowdy, drum-filled supporters section.
“It’s really about this community — the people who show up,” Scherrer said.
Sirois, who was one of the Hearts of Pine’s first employees, has watched that community develop from up close. She describes walking around Fitzy on matchdays and recognizing so many people that the experience sometimes reminds her of attending a family wedding.
Now, with Maine Wildness, the goal will be to create the same kind of welcoming environment that the Hearts of Pine has established.
“We are showing up for the women’s team the exact same way we are showing up for the men’s team,” Sirois said. “So it was never going to be like an A and B team.”
Both teams will operate under the broader Soccer Club of Maine organization, sharing much of the same front office and corporate partnerships. Even the people who scan fans’ tickets at Hearts of Pine games will likely do it for Wildness games, too.
Scherrer is currently the only employee hired specifically for the women’s team, although she will get plenty of help. Last week, for instance, Scherrer, Sirios, senior manager of marketing and communications Lisa Frates and other staff members held a launch event for the Maine Wildness in downtown Portland, where the team’s crest was revealed and the first merchandise went on sale.
The USL W League season relatively short — a few months in the late spring and summer. The Maine Wildness will play its home matches at Fitzpatrick, and Sirois expects the match-day experience to include the same food trucks, signage, hospitality areas and children’s activities that have become familiar features of the men’s games.
Behind the scenes, however, there are logistical questions still to solve. Because the Soccer Club of Maine doesn’t own Fitzpatrick Stadium (though it may be moving to a permanent home as soon as late 2027), its access to the facility is limited. The men’s team already uses Fitzpatrick for training during the week, so Sirios must explore other options for a training ground for the Wildness.
She is currently looking at off-site training facilities, with the hope that the women might still be able to train at Fitzpatrick occasionally, and particularly before home matches, in order to get more comfortable with their home field. Locker rooms and other player accommodations are also among her priorities.
“I want to make sure this women’s team and this community sees that we are giving the same equality to this team,” Sirois said.
Listen now to The IX Sports Podcast and Women’s Sports Daily
We are excited to announce the launch of TWO new podcasts for all the women’s sports fans out there looking for a daily dose of women’s sports news and analysis. Stream on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or anywhere you listen to podcasts, and make sure to subscribe!
The abbreviated USL W League season adds another layer of complexity. Players, many of whom are college athletes looking to play competitively over their summer breaks, will stay in Maine for a relatively short period of time. The club will need to provide an environment where they can adjust quickly, compete at a high level and feel rewarded by the experience. Sirois is committed to making the players feel at home from the moment they arrive.
And for Scherrer, that commitment extends to the way the organization presents its athletes. The USL W League occupies a distinctive place in American women’s soccer. As a pre-professional competition, it provides opportunities for college players and other developing athletes to compete at a high level during the summer. But the nature of the league also means that rosters are likely to change considerably from one season to the next.
That presents a different challenge from building a fan base around a professional team whose most recognizable players may remain with the club for years. But Scherrer doesn’t see that as a reason to invest less in the athletes themselves.
“One of my goals is to really make sure that their stories are told and to make sure that they have a professional player experience, even in a pre-professional league,” she said.
So she wants supporters to get to know the women who represent Maine Wildness, regardless of how long they remain with the club. Players may arrive from across the country, spend a summer in Portland and then return to their college programs or move on to other opportunities. But while they’re there, Scherrer wants them to feel that they’re part of something meaningful.
“We want people to rally around this team,” she said.
Your business can reach women’s sports fans who share your passion!
Here at The IX Sports, our audience is a collection of the smartest, most passionate women’s sports fans in the world. If your business has a mission to serve these fans, you should reach out to our team at BAlarie@theixsports.com to discuss ways to work together in 2026.
That philosophy also informs how the organization hopes to attract players in the first place. Scherrer sees Portland’s growing soccer reputation as a strong recruitment tool. For a player considering where to spend a summer, the prospect of competing in front of thousands of engaged supporters could be a powerful draw. When you think about it, how could it not be?
The enthusiasm surrounding Maine Wildness comes at a moment when women’s soccer in the United States is experiencing significant growth, from the professional game right down to the expanding network of pre-professional clubs. The Hearts of Pine has already shown that a lower-division soccer team can become a hub of community life in a city without a major professional sports team. The Maine Wildness now has an opportunity to build on that foundation while reaching people who weren’t necessarily part of the original excitement.
For Scherrer, that means turning the early buzz into something lasting through the power of story-telling — about the players, about the fans, about women in Maine. For Sirios, it means making sure the organization’s operations, facilities and resources can support the experience it wants to create. Both understand that the women’s team will benefit from the work Hearts of Pine has already done. But neither seems interested in simply mimicking it.
In the months ahead, Sirois will continue working through the details of where the women will train, how they’ll be accommodated and what their match days will look like. The same stadium that currently serves as practically her second home will soon be welcoming a new team and thousands of new supporters. As a result, Sirios will be busier than ever as Portland continues to write its own remarkable chapter bout the growth of soccer in the U.S.
