In the late 1980's several parents got together and formed a youth wrestling club to feed Grissom High School. That club was the Tiger Youth Wrestling Organization (TYWO). Over the years, other youth clubs came and went in Huntsville. Huntsville Youth Wrestling, Rocket City Wrestling, and Ultimate Wresting Club were a few of these. These other clubs came and went, sometimes in more than one incarnation. Over the years, wrestlers mixed in and out of all of these clubs. Through the past 30 years, TYWO was the only club that had continuous membership. For many years, TYWO trained at Grissom. We worked around the high school team's practice schedule and shared their mats and buying one of our own over the years. After the 2004 season, it was decided that TYWO would move to their own facility. We bought a second mat and moved to a building on South Parkway that came to be know as the Tiger's Den. This move made it possible to have consistent practice times as we no longer needed to work around the high school schedule. It also gave us room to grow. Around 2009, we bought a third mat.

In 2006, one of our former wrestlers, Jonathan Prince (JP), returned to Huntsville when his college program at Arizona State closed. JP had a desire to start a program for high school wrestlers to continue training in the off season. 6MoH was born and wrestlers benefited from summer training and exposure to Freestyle and Greco disciplines. Needing a facility to train these wrestlers and knowing that Tiger Youth did not use our facilities during most of the year, JP asked and was allowed to run 6MoH using the Tiger's Den. Talk of merging Tiger Youth and 6MoH became a frequent topic. 6MoH was growing and the decision to change the name to the Alabama Takedown Academy (ATA) was made. ATA started filling a need for youth wrestling that Tiger Youth never met. Namely, training for and competing in the USA wrestling season. Tiger Youth had only ever participated in the SYWO league. We discussed running the USA season under the Tiger Youth name, but ultimately decided that ATA was serving a super set of wrestlers compared to Tiger Youth. ATA had youth coming from Arab, Hartselle, and Madison, as well as some of our Tigers, to train for the USA season. These wrestlers returned to their home clubs for the SYWO season.

In 2011 we lost the room on South Parkway. We spent one year training in the building that previously housed the Tractor Supply store and moved the next year to our current home on Green Cove Road. After this move, the conversations regarding the actual differences between ATA and TYWO intensified. Most people agreed that it was not necessary to have two separate entities and we should consolidate the two clubs into one. Not wanting to see the Tiger Youth Wrestling Organization name retired, it was decided to call the consolidated club simply ATA/TYWO. By the 2013 season, the merger was fully in place.

Prior to the 2015 season, Grissom Wrestling contacted us and expressed a desire to start a youth club that would exclusively consist of kids that would eventually attend Grissom. Since the genesis of TYWO in the 1980's was to prepare youth wrestlers to wrestle at Grissom, they asked to operate this new club under the TYWO name. Our board met to discuss this and agreed to stop using TYWO in our name so that there would be less confusion regarding the programs. This was not a split of ATA/TYWO. ATA/TYWO became ATA and an entirely new organization began using the TYWO name. Along with the name, we offered Grissom our orange and black singlets and our orange headgear. This was almost $2000 worth of equipment and was the extent of physical assets that were offered to Grissom. They graciously accepted the singlets and headgear using them not only for their youth, but also their growing JV program. ATA retained possession of all other assets, including the three mats we had purchased over the course of approximately 30 years of existence.

The Alabama Takedown Academy will continue the work of training wrestlers of all ages. We remain the only club in Huntsville that offers competition opportunities to high school wrestlers outside the high school season.