MOUNT PLEASANT – Fort Madison’s head boys’ soccer coach Kevin Wellman is going to make his Bloodhounds uncomfortable.
After Thursday’s 5-1 loss at the hands of host Mt. Pleasant, saddling the Hounds with their first Southeast Conference loss of the year, gives the Panthers a one match lead for the conference title. The Hounds fall to 4-3-1 overall after knocking off Washington 5-0 on Monday.
Wellman said after the game that the Bloodhounds haven’t been made uncomfortable enough and have settled into some complacency.
“That’s on me, but we’re gonna get uncomfortable starting tomorrow. We’ve got two tough games in warm weather coming up against some tough teams. So they’re gonna get uncomfortable in practice, and then uncomfortable this weekend. And we’re gonna get better.”
The Hounds lone goal came on a penalty kick that senior Henry Graham slid past Panther keeper Xachary LeBlanc to the right for an early 1-0 lead at the 31-minute mark.
Mt. Pleasant would appear to have tied things up eight minutes later when freshman keeper Keelynd Ross got out of the net aways and deflected a ball that rolled on the goal line, but wasn’t whistled clean in the net and was pulled out by the Hounds and kept in play.
Graham would fire another shot at 15:31 that went wide left. The Hounds would get two more shots on goal in the half, but LeBlanc was up to the task as most of the shots came straight in. The Panthers would knot things up at the 9-minute mark when Dylan White followed a shot that Ross deflected to punch it in. Ross would also make a dive save on a Jacob Shottenkirk blast with four minutes left in the half. Connor Horn would get a shot off a corner kick that wouldn’t find the net as the half expired.
The Panthers came out of the break with two goals in the first six minutes, the first high off the hands of Ross that slipped over his head. White slipped a pass over to Brandon Veloz who punched it in from the left side of the net for a 2-1 lead. The Panthers scored again on the Hounds' freshman goalie when Jonah Zimmer lifted a shot from about 35 feet out up and precisely over the extended hands of Ross in the front of the box for a 3-1 lead.
The Panthers would score two more times – one at the 23-minute mark past a diving Ross, and the final goal with 6:51 left from freshman defender Asa Rose, who got free on a side run and found the back of the center behind the Hound defense.
Wellman said he should have picked up on some things sooner with the mentality of the Bloodhounds.
“There are things I should have identified earlier and nipped in the bud,” Wellman said. “We’ve had some slow play and some slow practices, but in order to grow, you have to be a little uncomfortable and we just aren’t. We weren't doing drills hard enough to push ourselves past our envelope and that’s totally on me.
“It’s bad timing because this was a tough game and we have two tough games coming.”
Wellman said the game was ebbing and flowing and the Hounds had some momentum in the first half. But then the momentum shifted before the Hounds even realized what had happened.
“It was a 1-1 game at the half. We had opportunities and they had opportunities. The second half we were playing hard enough, but we just made a lot of technical mistakes,” he said.
Senior Henry Graham, who had been battling some illness and a dinged ankle, said the Bloodhounds need to get back to playing their game and increase intensity.
“We need to up our intensity in practice. It hasn’t been enough. We’ve been giving minimal energy and we need to step it up,” Graham said.
“In my opinion, and that can differ from others, but if we play our game, we can threaten some teams. Today we started off well, but things just fell off. We weren’t ready, they we’re ready.”
The Hounds travel to Pella on Saturday for a two-game tourney with ADM and Pella before getting back to conference play against Fairfield on the road Thursday.
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