On Friday, Portland Hearts of Pine suffered a 4-1 road loss to Westchester SC. Five days later, they won 5-1 against the Richmond Kickers at home.

So what was the difference?

"Grit and resilience, self-belief," head coach Bobby Murphy said. "I think we were – and I don't know if we're out of it yet – in such a fragile place."

The loss against Westchester came during a difficult run that started with Hearts conceding two stoppage-time goals to give Corpus Christi FC their first league win.

That was followed by a 5-1 loss to Brooklyn FC of the USL Championship in the USL Cup and a 2-1 home defeat to Chattanooga Red Wolves, who scored the game-winner in stoppage time.

The game against Westchester started well enough, but goals via a corner kick and penalty – the second coming just before the break – gave the home side a 2-0 lead. Westchester scored three in the second half before Hearts pulled one back.

"It's like, oh, here we go," Murphy said. "It's amazing how fragile you can get in those moments.

"I'll give a Maine analogy: It’s like when you're in the glades skiing. To not hit the trees, you look at the snow, but if you look at the trees, you run into the trees. We're sort of always looking at the trees in that stretch."

Wednesday's game could've ended in disappointment for Hearts as Diego Gonzalez's goal in the 19th minute was nullified by Joshua Kirkland in the 25th.

But Ollie Wright nodded in Jaden Jones-Riley's service in the 57th minute to restore the home side’s lead, which they didn't relinquish. Goals by Konstantinos Georgallides (60') and Aboubacar Camara (70', 90+) sent fans home happy.

"I thought we were good in transition," Murphy said. "It all stems from our against-the-ball stuff. I think in the last few weeks – it's probably my fault [for] not communicating well enough – we've gone from pressing to chasing, and you get stretched and you get opened up and the gaps appear, and so we really focused this week on just staying really compact from back to front and from side to side, and picking our moments to go and win it, so that we have numbers around it."

Murphy was also impressed with his team's ability to make forward runs and get into the box, specifically highlighting Wright and Georgallides.

While the press and attack were positives, Hearts also saw improvement in seemingly innocuous moments.

Murphy noted that against Brooklyn, Camara allowed his man to score on a corner kick. On Wednesday, the first-year professional fought off a late cramp to get back in the box to mark his opponent.

"The last few weeks, we've been really complicit in the results that we've had, but we've also been ruthlessly punished for every little thing that's gone wrong," Murphy said. "So those are the moments that stop you from being punished."

In a sign of how quickly things can change, Hearts ended a four-game losing streak across all competitions with a commanding win that puts them three points below the playoff line.

Between a disjointed preseason, a host of injuries, and uncharacteristic on-field mishaps, it hasn't been an easy season for Hearts. The hope is that Wednesday's performance is a sign of things to come.

"We wanted to reward all of the people that come to see us," Georgallides said. "We felt like we let a lot of people down. We took that personally, but we didn't let it affect us. We kind of combined short-term memory as well as the fight that we wanted to show today, and I think we've shown that to be a good formula for the success that we had."