Jake Craig celebrates a victory during the NCAA Division III wrestling championships in Roanoke, Va. earlier this month. Craig, a Skowhegan native, finished fourth in the 125-pound division. He was also the third USM freshman to qualify for nationals in program history. Contributed photo by USM athletics/Brian Bishop

 Jake Peavey barely knew the rules of wrestling when he left for a trip 400 miles from home almost a decade ago. By the end of it, the sport was the only thing he could think about.

It might have seemed like a strange journey to agree to for the then eighth-grade Peavey, who was on his way to Clayton, N.Y., with a family friend, Jake Craig. Craig and his father, Bob, had long seen potential in Peavey, who had always been one of the biggest kids in his grade — and by the end of a duals tournament, Peavey saw it, too.

“I was hesitant about it at first; I didn’t really know them, and I didn’t know a lot of people in the wrestling community at the time, but my parents saw it as an opportunity and said, ‘Hey, this might be something to look into,’” Peavey said. “It was really fun, and I just kept going with it.”

The two have been mainstays of wrestling in Maine since, going onto become state champions at their respective high schools — Craig at Skowhegan and Peavey at Erskine Academy.

Now, they’re at the University of Southern Maine, where, as All-Americans, they’ve just guided the Huskies to one of their best-ever seasons.

Craig, a Norridgewock native, took fourth place at 125 pounds in the Division III national championships in Roanoke, Va earlier this month. Peavey, a China native, took sixth place at 285. Together, those results gave USM an 18th-place finish in the national tournament.

“It was one of the most surreal weekends,” Craig said. “The crowd is big, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. It was amazing because I felt like I belonged there. I think that’s what really prevented me from being nervous. I had gone through the same process as everyone else to get there, so it was a feeling of belonging.”

University of Southern Maine wrestler Jake Peavey, left, wrestles Michael Douglas of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse during the NCAA Division III championships in Roanoke, Va. earlier this month. Contributed photo by USM athletics/Brian Bishop

The fourth-place finish was the end to an up-and-down freshman season for Craig, who spent much of the year battling health troubles. He first hurt his shoulder during a practice late in the fall, and he then sat for nearly a month from early January through early February as he waited to be cleared after fainting during a match.

It was just the latest in a series of trying seasons for Craig. He spent his freshman year of high school at Skowhegan, went to the Hill School in Pottstown, Pa., for his sophomore and junior years and then returned to Skowhegan for a 2020-21 season that would be canceled. Then, in 2021-22, Craig was ineligible after he was ruled to have aged out as a super senior.

“After (I fainted), it was a feeling of, ‘man, why is this happening to me?’” Craig said. “I hadn’t had a season in two years before that, and it was like, ‘Is this one slipping away, too?’ I knew I could have success, but it was tough to try and figure it all out mentally and be able to battle my way through that.”

Craig, though, recovered in time to compete in the Division III regional tournament, in which he placed second. Peavey, meanwhile, was crowned the Northeast’s Division III heavyweight champion, pinning Coast Guard Academy’s Carl DiGiorgio in just 29 seconds in the championship bout.

Although Peavey had entered the 2022-23 season with national championship hopes, his sixth-place effort was still good enough to garner him All-American honors. That was plenty satisfying for the fifth-year senior after his appearance at nationals a year earlier ended in the “blood round,” in which a victory would have earned him All-American status.

“It was a year and three days ago today, and it was an upsetting moment to be so close earning All-American status and come up short,” Peavey said. “This year, I lost that first match (at nationals), but a thing in our program is that, if something happens, you refocus on the next-best thing. I refocused on being an All-American, and I did that.”

University of Southern Maine wrestler Jake Peavey, left, wrestles Peter Wersinger of the the College Of New Jersey during the NCAA Division III championships in Roanoke, Va. earlier this month. Contributed photo by USM athletics/Brian Bishop

USM head coach Mike Morin began recruiting Peavey in 2017 and Craig early last year, though he had known the Craig family ever since he was in college. With Craig competing in the lightest weight class and Peavey in the heaviest, both athletes were good fits for Morin’s Huskies at the times of their respective recruitments.

“Kids at 125 and 285, which is what the two Jakes are, they’re kind of hard to come by sometimes,” Morin said. “When you see a guy who you think could be really good in those classes, you really want them, especially when they’re good people and leaders. Those were two guys we really wanted, and fortunately, we got them.”

Although Peavey, as noted, didn’t begin wrestling until he was almost in high school, training with Craig and his family helped him make up for lost time. Bob Craig organized teams that would return to Thousand Islands as well as travel to Virginia Beach, and Peavey and “Jakey,” as the former still calls Craig, were always staples.

The three-year age gap meant Peavey and Craig’s high school careers didn’t overlap by much, but the one season in which they did produced a memorable ending. Craig, a freshman, won the 106-pound title in the 2018 Class A state championship meet, the same meet in which Peavey, then a senior, became state champ in the heavyweight division.

“There’s a photo of us when I was a freshman and he was a senior where we’re both holding up our state champion brackets together,” Craig said. “He’s kind of like a big brother to me. He’s helped me out with a ton over the years, and I couldn’t have asked for a better teammate.”

Jake Craig celebrates a victory during the NCAA Division III wrestling championships in Roanoke, Va. earlier this month. Craig, a Skowhegan native, finished fourth in the 125-pound division. He was also the third USM freshman to qualify for nationals in program history. Contributed photo by USM athletics/Brian Bishop

Peavey used almost identical words to describe Craig, whom he said was “basically a little  brother.”

The Erskine heavyweight got the chance to host his younger, smaller counterpart on a visit when he was being recruited last year, and their reunion, he said, felt as if they “didn’t skip a beat.”

Peavey is set to graduate in May with a degree in business management. He has a job lined up with L.L. Bean upon graduation, and although he won’t get the chance to further his career on the mats as a competitor, he hopes to get back into wrestling as a coach in the future.

Craig, though, has time left to achieve his goal of winning a national title. After all, he wasn’t all that far away as a freshman — and with the encouragement of his head coach and the teammate with whom he first bonded on that 2014 trip to western New York, he feels as if he’s on the precipice of getting there.

“Jake and Coach Morin, they helped me a lot through that,” Craig said. “Their support was amazing, and I was able to look forward and not back. Now, I want more. I know I can come back and do even better if I come back and just keep putting in the work for it.”