Maine Wildness: Portland's New Women's Soccer Team Gets Its Name on a Day the Governor Gave to the Game

The short version: Maine's new pre-professional women's soccer team has a name. At a brand reveal in Portland's Old Port on Thursday, October 15 — a date Governor Janet Mills had proclaimed the state's second-ever Maine Day of Soccer — the Portland Hearts of Pine organization introduced the Maine Wildness, the USL W League club that will begin play in the 2027 season at Fitzpatrick Stadium. Five hundred community members were there for the first look at the name and crest.

A name the supporters helped choose

The club said the name came out of months of conversations with hundreds of supporters, fans and community members across the state — the same town-hall process that has defined the Soccer Club of Maine since the Hearts of Pine men's team launched. The word is meant to hold two ideas at once: the character of Maine women and the state's wilderness, a name for people and place together. Founder and chief community officer Gabe Hoffman-Johnson said the responses the club kept hearing paired love for what the Hearts had built with a desire for something distinct for the women's team — and that "Wildness" was where that listening landed. The crest, designed to sit alongside the Hearts of Pine identity without copying it, was created by Portland designer Pame Chévez, who moved to Maine from Mexico in 2016 and has become a fixture of the city's creative community, with work for local organizations including Lift All Boats and her own nonprofit, Palmar Collective.

From town halls to a 30-minute sellout

The timeline explains why a name reveal drew a crowd of 500. Club ownership first floated a women's team in October 2025, then took the idea public in February 2026 under a "USLW to Portland" banner, holding town halls that featured U.S. women's national team midfielder Sam Coffey and retired greats Michelle Akers — who would become the project's founding advisor — and Sara Whalen Hess. On June 4, 2026, the club and the league made it official: a USL W League expansion team in Maine for the 2027 season, playing in the Northeast Division at Fitzpatrick Stadium, the roughly 6,000-capacity ground the team will share with the Hearts of Pine men and Portland High School athletics. City council approval followed on June 16. The clearest measure of demand came June 11, when season-ticket deposits went on sale: all 4,300 were gone in 30 minutes. For a pre-professional women's team that will not play a match for months, that is not a marketing statistic — it is a statement about what Portland intends this club to be.

A day of soccer, twice over

The governor's proclamation tied Thursday deliberately to the club's origin story. Mills declared the first Maine Day of Soccer in April 2024, when the Hearts of Pine name, crest and brand were unveiled for the men's USL League One team. Declaring a second for the Wildness launch framed the women's team not as an accessory to the men's club but as the same kind of civic moment. In her statement, Mills praised the pride and energy the Hearts have brought Maine across their first two seasons and said the new team would give women and girls a new way to lead and compete. Structurally, the organizations are set up to match that framing: the Wildness and the Hearts are coequal clubs under the Soccer Club of Maine umbrella — the Hearts do not own the Wildness — sharing ownership led by Hoffman-Johnson with Jonathan and Catherine Culley and broadcaster Tom Caron among the principals.

Why this works in Portland

Part of the story is fit. The Hearts of Pine became one of American lower-league soccer's genuine phenomena by treating identity as a community project — Maine-first branding, packed houses at Fitzpatrick Stadium, and a supporter culture built in public. The Wildness launch followed the identical playbook on purpose: ask the state what it wants, hold the meetings, let a local artist draw the crest, and unveil it in a room full of the people who asked for it. The USL W League is a pre-professional league, a development stage for college players and emerging talent rather than a fully professional circuit, which makes the Portland numbers more remarkable, not less. Selling 4,300 deposits in half an hour for a team at that level says the demand in Maine is not for a level of soccer. It is for a team of their own.

What happens next

The Wildness will spend the coming months doing the unglamorous work the reveal makes possible: building a roster and technical staff for a May 2027 first season, scheduling at Fitzpatrick Stadium alongside the Hearts and Portland High, and converting those 4,300 deposit-holders into the loudest room in the Northeast Division. The Hearts of Pine men, meanwhile, play on — the organization that started as one team's brand launch in April 2024 is now a two-club soccer institution with a state holiday, of sorts, to prove it. Maine has had a Day of Soccer twice now. Both times, it was because Portland was introducing a team the state had effectively named itself. On Thursday, the second one got its name: Wildness, which — for a team born in town halls and sold out in 30 minutes — sounds about right.