Hounds again one win from state

FORT MADISON - The choice was simple — run down the clock, or deliver some punctuation.
Jacob Pothitakis and Xander Wellman chose the latter, and it was a masterful end to a masterful win.
Fort Madison’s 4-2 win over Burlington in Monday’s Class 3A Substate 4 semifinal at the Baxter Sports Complex was punctuated by a goal with 26 seconds left that was artful in its execution.
Pothitakis was in the corner to the right of the Grayhounds’ goal as the seconds ticked away. But he saw an opening, getting around a BHS defender and delivering a perfect pass to Wellman, whose third and final goal of the night clinched the win.
“I knew he’d find me — we’ve worked on those kinds of passes for weeks in practice,” Wellman said. “I just knew where it would be, and I trusted him. What a ball, I had to do nothing there. I stuck my foot out and the ball was right there.”
“I think they thought I was going to try to hold it out for the rest of the half,” Pothitakis said. “It opened up, so I tried to dribble through. I got a lucky bounce and I knew Xander would be there.”
“He put a laser across, and Xander was in the right place at the right time,” Fort Madison coach Kevin Wellman said. “A nice exclamation point on the night.”
And now the Bloodhounds are back in a familiar spot — one win away from the state tournament.
Fort Madison (15-3) plays at Iowa City Liberty (8-8) in Wednesday’s substate final.
The Bloodhounds have reached this step the two previous seasons, only to be denied by Pella.
A new foe awaits.
“I’m excited to get up there,” Xander Wellman said. “We’ve fallen short two years in a row, and I don’t want to do that again.”
To get there, though, the Bloodhounds would have to defeat the Grayhounds (11-6). The two teams split this season, with both matches decided by 1-0 scores.
“After we lost to Burlington, this is what we’ve been working for,” Pothitakis said. “Burlington is a great team. They play hard, they play physical. And we love playing against them. To be able to beat them, and get to (the substate final), it means a lot.”
The match delivered on what Kevin Wellman anticipated.
“It was one of those where I bit my nails off,” he said. “But it was expected. The last two times we played them it was 1-0. It was expected to be an absolute dogfight. And boy, oh boy, was it.
“It was a fast game. It was a technically sound game.”
But the Bloodhounds started quickly. Xander Wellman scored two goals within 3 1/2 minutes of each other midway through the first half, then Leif Boeding blasted a deep shot with 14:56 to play for a 3-0 lead.
“We’ve struggled with that all season, not getting off the line on that first whistle,” Kevin Wellman said. “That did set the tone. It just gives you breathing room, when instead of worrying about making mistakes, we were a little more relaxed.”
“They were huge,” Xander Wellman said of the early goals. “Last time we played them, we lost in the first five minutes. They scored early, and then they parked the bus on us. We knew we had to come out stronger in the first 10 minutes, and that’s what we did.”
“It was really big,” Pothitakis said. “It helped us play defense, helped us continue to fight. It gave us a little cushion, but we had to keep fighting.”
Burlington scored with 1:48 left when Braden Schooner scored from the right side.
“We had control of the game for most of the first half, then Burlington took momentum at the end of it and scored that one, and really changed things going into halftime,” Kevin Wellman said.
“I think we got a tiny bit lazy there at the end of the first half,” Pothitakis said.
Aiden Pfeifer’s goal with 12:42 left in the game got the Grayhounds within 3-2, and from then on it was a frantic struggle, with the Grayhounds scrambling for a goal and Fort Madison trying to deny it.
Then came Pothitakis-to-Wellman, and it was the perfect end.