Down for Rules
Building Rules Around Roughhousing: How Down to Wrestle Teaches Safe Play & Sportsmanship
When we first launched Down to Wrestle, we knew that structured roughhousing could be an incredible tool for building confidence, strength, and coordination. But we also had concerns—what would happen in regular social settings if we encouraged wrestling on the mat? Would our athletes take that same energy onto the schoolyard, where there were no coaches to guide them? Would they understand when and where it was appropriate to wrestle? And beyond that, how could we ensure safety on the mat itself?
Through trial and error, we eventually created a simple but effective rule: wrestlers can only wrestle if—and only if—both members meet two conditions:
Both members are wearing the same Down to Wrestle shirt. (This ensures they are part of the program and understand the structure of safe wrestling.)
Both members shake hands beforehand. (This reinforces respect, consent, and sportsmanship.)
To try to make this rule stick, we reinforced it in multiple ways. We drilled it into practice routines, reminded athletes in person and even created handouts, posters, and placed the rule inside the Athlete Handbook for parents to reinforce at home. This wasn’t just about preventing unnecessary wrestling on the playground—it was about instilling sportsmanship and teaching our athletes to recognize when and where wrestling is appropriate.
We’ve learned that praising proper demonstration of the rule has worked best, and have even included a Sportsmanship Badge in the athlete handbook!
And now, it’s absolutely heartwarming to see the kids take to this. Watching them instinctively shake hands before a match is a small but powerful testament to how they’ve embraced the values of respect and structure.
Co-founder Johann has seen this rule transform communication for his son, Joseph. Because his speech literacy is delayed, Johann says that Joe now tell us his parent’s he wants to wrestle by finding his Down to Wrestle t-shirt and proudly putting it on!
That’s more than just a rule at work. That’s inclusion, empowerment, and growth happening in real time.
