After spending more than a month without a home dual meet the Albert Lea wrestling team finally made its home debut and with it the Tigers got a few things accomplished along the way.

Sixth-ranked Albert Lea (8-10) has focused on getting falls and bonus points in duals and Tuesday the Tigers finally found them in bunches with a 51-15 victory over Mankato West.

In nine matches Albert Lea recorded bonus points with four coming as a result of falls.

“What I liked about tonight was I told them before we started, ‘We gotta get some falls. We gotta start getting after them bonus points’ and they did that,” said Tigers head coach Larry Goodnature. “We worked our falls really good tonight.”

Devin Nelson, Jacob Tyler, Trey Hable and Connor Kortan all picked up victories by fall while Garrett Wangsness, Dalton Westerlund, Trevor Rasmussen and Carter Kortan won by major decision. Cory Hansen recorded a technical fall victory as well.

Wrestling in front of the home crowd served as an added benefit.

“I think we needed it,” Westerlund said. “We’ve been on the road pretty much the whole year. To have our fans behind us for this one was pretty nice.”

The Scarlets entered the dual with a 5-0 record against Big Nine opponents, but unlike most of Albert Lea’s recent opponents, did not have a ranking attached to them.

The dual gave some of the individual wrestlers an opportunity to work on scoring points and getting falls against a possible section opponent since Mankato West moved into Section 1AAA this season.

“We need matches like these because we need to learn how to score points against the bigger teams,” Carter Kortan said.

Albert Lea led 45-0 before the Scarlets posted a victory and it came with Tyler Jakes earning a 5-4 decision over Caleb Kolodge at 160 pounds.

The Tigers face another conference foe Friday when Faribault comes to town before they head up to Champlin Park for a tournament.

Albert Lea 51, Mankato West 15

103—Garrett Wangsness (AL) maj. dec. Josh Hendrickson 18-5; 112—Lucas Hansen (AL) won by forfeit; 119—Devin Nelson (AL) pinned Jordan Hellie 1:58; 125—Jacob Tyler (AL) pinned Tyler Horwig 3:30; 130—Trey Hable (AL) pinned Aaron Wall 3:34; 135—Dalton Westerlund (AL) maj. dec. Alex Thompson 12-0; 140—Cory Hansen (AL) tech. fall Dalton Matthies 17-0; 145—Trevor Rasmussen (AL) maj. dec. Hunter Friesen 10-1; 152—Carter Kortan (AL) maj. dec. Jordan Dalluge 11-3; 160—Tyler Jakes (MW) dec. Caleb Kolodge 5-4; 171—Connor Kortan (AL) pinned Kelsey Smisek 3:01; 189—Thomas WIlliams (MW) dec. Caleb Gaudian 10-6; 215—Evan Jones (MW) dec. Alex Nielsen 2-0; 285—Hunter Wanderscheit (MW) pinned Christian Andersen 3:21.