Sun | Sep 7, 2025

JWF eyeing wrestling programmes for primary schools

Published:Saturday | January 11, 2025 | 12:10 AMGregory Bryce/Staff Reporter
Fourteen-year-old Mason Kanigy (left) and 13-year-old Jada Steer of Marymount High School display their wrestling skills during an all-Jamaican battle at the first staging of the Jamaica Wrestling Federation Open Beach Wrestling competition at Harmony Beac
Ashley Anguin
Fourteen-year-old Mason Kanigy (left) and 13-year-old Jada Steer of Marymount High School display their wrestling skills during an all-Jamaican battle at the first staging of the Jamaica Wrestling Federation Open Beach Wrestling competition at Harmony Beach Park in Montego Bay on Saturday, January 4, 2025.

Coming off their successful launch of the Jamaica Open Beach Wrestling competition last week, Jamaica Wrestling Federation (JWF) vice president John Isaacs said the association is hoping they can bring the sport to primary schools in the near future.

Speaking with The Gleaner, Isaacs said the association is committed to growing the sport throughout Jamaica.

He explained that one such way for the association to achieve their goal is to introduce wrestling to Jamaicans at a very early age.

“We are hoping, in the near future, to put together a grassroots programme where we try to bring it into the primary schools,” Isaacs stated.

“It is a discussion we’ve had with the Ministry of Education where we have some basic skills that we want Jamaican children to have and we have the programmes where we can start children doing a form of wrestling from as young as five where we have them wrestling a ball,” he added.

The JWF are confident that should students be introduced to wrestling at an early age, then it will boost Jamaica’s international standing in the sport.

Isaacs pointed to Caribbean neighbours Cuba as proof of the region’s ability to produce world class talents in wrestling.

He believes as the sport continues to grow, the JWF will be able to develop home-grown athletes capable of competing at the Olympic level.

“We, as a people, are very capable where sports are concerned and I think we have the ability to thrive in any sports that we put our minds to,” the vice president stated.

“We’re looking to develop our local talent to have an Olympic Jamaican wrestler. We see where Cuba does very well in the Olympics and I think we have competed very well with Cuba so I don’t see why we can’t do the same. All the experts are telling us that they believed with the proper training and such, Jamaica can make a massive impact like we normally do in the other sports.”

Isaacs also stated the skills learned from wrestling can be applied across other sporting disciplines.

He explained that the JWF has worked alongside Jamaican rugby teams in the past with helping players on the proper techniques in falling and tackling.

“The beautiful thing about wrestling is that it is one of those foundational sports. We have done cross-training with the rugby team because we teach people how to properly fall and how to take down others,” he said.

“Wrestling can also help with football because a lot of footballers really don’t know how to fall and once you do wrestling, you really learn how to protect yourself while falling.”

As he campaigned for the importance of wrestling, Isaacs said the sport can be applied across all aspects of life as the sport can also be used as practice for self defence.

“In the world out there, people see the benefit of wrestling as a foundational thing. It is sport where if you learn how to do it well, you can learn to protect yourself and it works for men and women.”