Notebook: Maine Wildness, Hearts of Pine now sister clubs under the Soccer Club of Maine

The women’s team isn’t a branch of the Hearts. Here’s how the new parent organization works, and what the founder had to say this month.

Founder and Chief Community Officer Gabe Hoffman-Johnson, left, speaks at the brand unveiling event earlier this month for the Maine Wildness. VP of Fan Experience Hannah Sirois stands next to him. George Watson/The Hearts’ Beat

We have been working on a number of feature stories today that will be coming out soon, so let’s just do a quick notebook dump.

• If you’ve been trying to work out how the new women’s team fits with the Portland Hearts of Pine, you’re not alone. Since the club announced in June that it had secured a USL W League franchise, the women’s side has mostly been described as the Hearts of Pine’s women’s team, which made it sound like Maine Wildness was a branch of the men’s club.

  
  It isn’t.
  
  Both teams now sit under a parent organization called the Soccer Club of Maine. Hearts of Pine and the Wildness are sister clubs under that umbrella, and The IX reports that they will share much of the same front office and corporate partners.

  
  The name shouldn’t surprise anyone who has followed the club closely. Founder and Chief Community Officer Gabe Hoffman-Johnson has been calling it “the soccer club of Maine” for a while, including in the club’s February announcement of the women’s team town halls and in Gov. Janet Mills’ Day of Soccer announcement this month.

  
  Until now it was a slogan. Now it’s the name of the organization, and that should make things simpler to talk about: Hearts of Pine is the USL League One men’s team, the Wildness is the USL W team, and the Soccer Club of Maine is the organization that runs both.

• The Soccer Club of Maine’s breakdown of the Wildness’ new crest is worth a look. It’s a beautiful piece of art that, just like the Hearts’ crest, is filled with details that each have their own specific and intentional meaning.

  

  Graphic courtesy of the Maine Wildness

Want to know how the crest came to life? We will have a Q&A with designer Pame Chévez coming up soon.

• Hoffman-Johnson’s monthly letter, posted Oct. 20 on the club’s website, was mostly about the Maine Wildness, and the idea of a women’s team goes back further than you might realize. He wrote that the club has been thinking about a women’s team in Portland since 2018, years before the Hearts played a game.
  

  The Wildness name came out of a year of asking Mainers what the team should stand for, plus some help from writers like John Muir, Henry David Thoreau and Terry Tempest Williams, Hoffman-Johnson wrote. It clicked for him with three words: Wildness, not wilderness.

  Hoffman-Johnson didn’t dodge the men’s season, either. He called it a hard year with missed chances, saying the answer is honest work on what needs fixing, and thanked the players who may have played their last match at Fitzy.