Staff photo / Preston Byers Austintown Fitch’s Christian Henik (left) and Lakeview’s Nick Townsend lock up during their match in Cortland on Wednesday.

CORTLAND — Austintown Fitch’s B team and Leetonia took part in Lakeview’s inaugural home wrestling meet Wednesday, with the Falcons dominating both teams on the mat.

Despite the results, Bulldogs head coach Ryan Williams spoke positively of the night in general for the new club.

“Our guys are giving up all the experience, but they definitely went out and tried to wrestle,” Williams said. “They didn’t go way down, so we can work with that. We can build on it. I’ll take it.

“They get to see where they can be in a few years. It’s never fun losing like that, but there were a lot of positives.”

The Bulldogs managed just one win vs. Fitch, a 9-7 result at 126 pounds for Dustin Corbett vs. Ethan Dean, and were otherwise overwhelmed by the much more seasoned Falcons. Similarly, Fitch won five of the six matches it had against short-handed Leetonia, which had just a few wrestlers to compete with against the Bulldogs and Falcons.

“It’s really good for our younger kids to get out here and go against good, quality competition, wrestling in a dual-meet setting,” Fitch head coach John Burd said. “Just getting that extra experience and coming out and competing as a group, it’s always valuable to have your teammates around you in a dual-meet atmosphere.”

Lakeview had three pinfall victories against Leetonia, which faced both Fitch and Lakeview before the larger teams collided with each other. The result of the latter dual was a 75-3 win for the Falcons, who, coincidentally, sold the mat they were wrestling on to the first-year Lakeview program.

The newness of the sport to Lakeview was evident both on and off the mat, as Williams, in addition to coaching his team, would occasionally direct his attention and shout to the scoreboard operator to add points or start the clock.

“They’re so new to it that they continue to make the same mistakes over and over,” Williams said of his team. “They just don’t have the reps yet. They’ve only been at it three weeks. It’ll come. It’ll come in time.”

Williams also complimented the attendance of the meet, remarking that it was a “pretty good crowd” and expressed optimism that the Bulldogs’ fan base will continue to grow as the program does.

As for Fitch, Wednesday’s visit to Cortland was just the beginning of a stretch of competitions over the next few weeks, which includes the Hoppel Memorial tournament this coming weekend, the Medina Invitational Tournament next week and a 40-plus team girls tournament at Fitch in early January.