Lady Hounds get prepped by Davenport North

FORT MADISON - Davenport North handed Fort Madison’s girls soccer team its second loss of the season and also provided the Bloodhounds with something to work on for the upcoming postseason.
The 5-2 loss at the Baxter Sports Complex on Thursday night was an education for the Bloodhounds (12-2-2), who start Class 2A regional play next week.
“I think we learned we have some work to do to be able to compete with higher-level teams,” Fort Madison coach Carrie Burken said. “And I think we learned we're not always good at adjusting on the fly on the field. A lot of times we wait until halftime, or wait until we're able to talk about it collectively. So we just need to do that and make those adjustments a little bit sooner.
“But I think it's really good. It tells us where we need to improve and where we're actually good at.”
North (8-6-2), a Class 3A team out of the Mississippi Athletic Conference, struck for four first-half goals, two coming in the first 13 minutes of the match.
Stellah Davis scored 4 ½ minutes into the match, then Kaylee Nuci’s goal less than nine minutes later put the Wildcats up 2-0.

Jacey Mason and Alaina Zamora also had goals for North before Fort Madison finally answered on Teagan Snaadt’s breakaway goal with 6:17 left in the half.
“I think offensively, they make really good runs, especially the way they make their runs in between defenders and then behind defenders, which is very effective,” Burken said. “And we hadn't really seen that a ton, except for Burlington (which handed Fort Madison its other loss of the season), and I think they're actually better at it than Burlington is. So that was really good to see. And then they’re a good possession team, just very good at connecting passes, which I think we see with Burlington. But again, it just shows us what we need to do in order to keep possession.”
Davis’ second goal six minutes into the second half concluded the scoring for North. Snaadt scored off an assist from Hadley Wolfe with 8:20 to play for the final margin.
The Bloodhounds’ postseason path is identical to recent seasons. Fort Madison opens the regional tournament with Friday’s 7 p.m. home match against Keokuk (1-11-1), with Southeast Conference champion Burlington (11-2-2) looming in the May 28 semifinal.
“I think it's something that we know, that we can usually anticipate what it's going to be, but you can't take any team for granted,” Burken said. “You have to play to a higher level. So hopefully today's game motivates us to do more work in practice next week to get better at those things that we didn't look so great at.”
Burken gave the Bloodhounds the weekend off since they have played nine matches in the last three weeks. They’ll get four days to prepare for the postseason next week.
“If you think about it, in the last three weeks, at most, we would've had six days of practice, but in reality, we had four days of practice just to try to get some rest,” Burken said. “So we haven't necessarily had a ton of time to work on little details to improve on, so it's nice to have those days next week.”