John Bohnenkamp for Pen City Current Sports
Fort Madison’s boys soccer team is good in the second half.
The Bloodhounds’ coach would rather his team be good in the first half as well.
Fort Madison opened Southeast Conference play on Thursday with a 4-0 win over Fairfield at the Baxter Sports Complex.
Xander Wellman and Jacob Shottenkirk each scored twice for the Bloodhounds (3-0), who got three of their goals in the second half.
Eight of Fort Madison’s 10 goals in regulation time this season have come in the second half, and coach Kevin Wellman would like his team to get off to better starts.
“We’re calling ourselves a second-half team,” Wellman said, smiling. “We’re great in the second half. We’ve got to figure out the first half.”
Better starts, Wellman said, might come with a different warmup strategy.
“Get them a little faster-paced, so they’re revved up by the first whistle,” Wellman said.
There might also have to be a different approach for the offense.
“We talked about keeping it simple, you know, playing a simple pass that's easier to to complete, easier to trap on the other end,” Wellman said. “Instead we’re making it more difficult. Then once we've settled into the game, then we can start doing those more difficult passes that are more risky, but with bigger reward.”
The game was scoreless until Xander Wellman scored with 23 seconds left in the first half.
“Fairfield clogged it up on us,” Kevin Wellman said. “They were forcing bad passes from us, and we weren’t connecting on those passes. And that’s the story right there. We didn’t connect on those passes.”
The Bloodhounds had four quality scoring chances go wide of the net in the half.
“Fairfield had some good opportunities too,” Wellman said. “They were getting behind our defense with some balls, and us coaches were getting a little nervous. We had some opportunities that we didn’t capitalize on, but in the second half we took advantage.”
Shottenkirk scored with 2:48 gone in the second half, then added another goal almost three minutes later. Xander Wellman closed the scoring with a goal with 18:32 left.
Fort Madison, which swept all 10 conference matches last season, travels to play Washington (3-0, 1-0) on Monday.
“One of our goals is to win the conference and we’ve got one checkmark down,” Kevin Wellman said. “We’ve got nine more to get.”
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