Hearts of Pine coach Bobby Murphy watches the action during a Jan. 22 practice. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Press Herald

The Portland Hearts of Pine’s first game in Maine will be sooner than expected.

Portland’s professional men’s soccer team, a United Soccer League One expansion franchise, will play a Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup first-round game on March 20 at Lewiston High.

Portland will play Clube Desportivo Faialense, an amateur squad from Cambridge, Massachusetts, nine days before its USL League One opener at FC Naples (Florida).

The Open Cup game will be played at Lewiston High because there is no guarantee the multi-million dollar renovation of Fitzpatrick Stadium will be ready by then. The team is set to make its Portland debut on May 4.

“We’re pretty sure we could host an Open Cup game at Fitzpatrick but we don’t want to roll the dice too much,” said team president Kevin Schohl.

There is precedent for teams to host U.S. Open Cup games at alternate sites as a way to help promote their team and brand, Schohl added.

When it became apparent the Hearts of Pine could host a first-round game, they began looking at alternative sites. Lewiston became a prime option, Schohl said, because the city has a rich connection to soccer.

Lewiston’s Khalid Hersi became the first Mainer to sign a player contract with the Hearts of Pine. Lewiston has hosted high school soccer and football championships, as well as the Shrine Lobster Bowl all-star football game.

This will be the 110th edition of the U.S. Open Cup. The 96-team field includes 32 amateur clubs and squads from all of the country’s professional leagues. Last year, in the 32 first-round games, seven amateur teams beat pro squads.

“I just think it’s special. There’s no other sport at least on the American landscape that allows the little guys to take on the big guys,” said Bobby Murphy, the Hearts of Pine coach. “I think the closest thing is the NCAA tournament, March Madness.”

USL League One is a third-tier pro league. If a team like the Hearts of Pine wins two games it will likely step up to play a USL Championship (second-tier) team. Sixteen Major League Soccer teams will enter the tournament at the Round of 32.

Murphy was an assistant coach with Union Omaha, a USL League One team, when it advanced to the quarterfinals in 2022.

“We beat two MLS teams along the way and lost to Kansas City in a sold-out stadium with 22,000 people,” Murphy said. “That Cup run was pretty special. We beat Chicago Fire in Chicago and Minnesota United in Minnesota. They had players on the field worth more than our entire club.”

Like last year, the first round of the U.S. Open Cup will consist of 32 games, each pitting an amateur side against a third-tier pro team.

Hearts of Pine player Khalid Hersi chases down a loose ball during a Jan. 22 practice. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Press Herald

The single-elimination tournament is played in addition to the teams’ regular league schedules. Games are every other week through the Round of 16 on May 20-21. It does slow then, with quarterfinals on July 8-9, semifinals on Sept. 16-17, and the final on Oct. 1.

Because they are a professional side, the Hearts of Pine will be in a unique position of being favored in their first official match.

“I don’t think it’s unreasonable for us to have expectations for ourselves, and I think we’re going to be good enough to make a little bit of a run and see where we get,” Murphy said.

Clube Desportivo Faialense, formed by immigrants from the island of Faial in the Azores, is also a social club that features Portuguese fare. It has fielded soccer teams since the early 1970s. CD Faialense has won the Bay State Soccer League the past two seasons and last fall qualified for its first Open Cup.

Hearts of Pine right back Jaden Jones-Riley, a third-year pro, was on the wrong side of a pro vs. amateur outcome last season. Jones-Riley played for Portland Timbers 2 of MLS Next Pro when it lost to El Farolito, an amateur club named for a popular San Francisco burrito joint that won the Open Cup championship in 1993.

“They might be amateur teams, but if you work hard and train hard at soccer you can be good,” said Jones-Riley, the 73rd pick in the 2022 MLS Super Draft who grew up in Tallahassee, Florida, and played college soccer for the University of Dayton. “And a lot of these teams have hard-working players that have been playing awhile. We cannot sleep on any of these teams.”

Australian native Pat Langlois, a midfielder, had the positive experience of helping since-disbanded Northern Colorado Hailstorm FC of the USL League One win two Open Cup games last year before falling to Tulsa FC of the USL Championship league.

“As a player, every game is do-or-die. There are no second chances. To have that excitement every game, it enthuses you as a player and the whole point of the Cup is to have underdogs have a run,” Langlois said. “That’s the magic of the Cup. Every year there’s a team that goes further than they’re meant to.”