The Carolina RailHawks returned from the Rochester-Montreal trip last weekend uplifted by their play but dejected by the results their efforts produced.

A 3-3 tie in Rochester and a 3-0 loss to the Impact left the RailHawks 0-4-1 on their month-long, five-match road trip. The team that started the season unbeaten (3-0-4) and was flirting with the top of the USL First Division table in May was near the bottom of the standings by the end of June. Entering Friday’s match at WakeMed Soccer Park against Portland, Carolina’s first home match since May 28, the RailHawks were ninth in the 11-team league.

With the June 24 U.S. Open Cup match against Real Maryland and Friday’s visit from Portland awaiting them when they returned home, the RailHawks didn’t have the opportunity to take stock of what had happened over the last month or what they might need to do in the immediate future to make up ground.

And Coach Scott Schweitzer decided that was just what his team needed. They weren’t going to focus on the big picture any more. The RailHawks needed to prescribe to the tried-and-true cliché: one game at a time.

“We’re going to stop worrying about where we are in the standings and what we need to do. Because of all that, it wasn’t letting us be ourselves and letting us just play,” Schweitzer said. “We can’t control what’s happening in other cities. That’s not for us to worry about, and I think we were.”

The new mindset produced a pair of wins.

Carolina beat Real Maryland of the USL Second Division 1-0, a result that set up Tuesday’s third-round Open Cup match with Major League Soccer’s Kansas City Wizards (result unavailable at press time). And Friday, Carolina snapped its league funk with a 1-0 win over the visiting Timbers.

“It’s a big win,” said Carolina midfielder Martin Nuñez, whose fourth-minute strike against Portland held up as the game winner. “It was a big week we had last week, a lot of games in a couple days. But we sucked it up, came out today and worked hard.”

Carolina (4-4-5) got the win over the Timbers, ironically, by doing what Portland does best — counterattack. Started by David Stokes out of the back, Dan Antoniuk played a ball to Caleb Norkus outside the Timbers’ penalty area. As two Portland defenders closed in, the ball popped out to Nuñez, who then slotted the ball under the outstretched hand of Portland goalkeeper Ray Burse.

“We had a major block at the start of the game,” said Portland coach Gavin Wilkinson. “Some players didn’t start particularly well, and we suffered because of it. For the rest of the game, it was a fairly even game.”

With Portland on the ball for much of the second half, Carolina held on thanks to its defense.

Goalkeeper Chris McClellan made five saves against Portland, upping his First Division leading total to 56. But none required the acrobatics like he displayed against Real Maryland earlier in the week, when his nine-save effort single-handedly kept Carolina in the game until Kupono Low’s 90th-minute penalty secured the win.

It was the third straight game the back four — Low wide left, Steve Curfman on the right, and mainstays Stokes and Mauricio Segovia in the middle — played together, and they put forth Carolina’s best defensive effort in weeks. They held Portland midfielder Chris Brown, the league’s leading shot taker (39), to two shots and they kept the pressure off McClellan all night.

“We were a little lackluster on Tuesday,” McClellan said. “Tonight, they were blocking shot after shot. That’s just good defense.”

As the team cooled down Friday, there was a sense of relief amidst the postgame stretching and chatter. Though relieved by the end of the five-match winless streak, they were more relieved by how they achieved the result.

“The relief is knowing we were good,” Schweitzer said. “We just need to play. Forget about everything else, just play, and have fun, enjoy it, play for each other, attack and play soccer.”

Though they’ve lamented the full schedule as of late, this week won’t be any easier. After Tuesday’s visit from Kansas City, the RailHawks will play reigning league champion Seattle (4-2-7) on Thursday.

After that, though, they’re not looking any farther.

“One game at a time, and really one game at a time,” Schweitzer said. “We can’t control anything but the game we’re playing.”