Prep wrestling | All-Area Player of the Year Marshall Craig follows family legacy to success at Manatee
BRADENTON -- Relics from the program's history cover the walls in the wrestling room at Manatee High School. The team refers to itself as the "Manatee Mafia" because family and an appreciation of history are central tenets of the Hurricanes' success.
Win a state championship -- get your name on one wall.
Place at the state tournament -- get your name on another.
There are placards to commemorate success in offseason tournaments or youth program victories. Old team pictures serve as both a decoration and reminder of the Hurricanes' predecessors. And no name comes up more frequently than Craig.
The Craig family has spanned four decades at Manatee High School. There have been state medalists, assistant coaches, youth champions and now a Herald all-area wrestler of the year. Marshall Craig earned the honor with a third-place finish in the Class 3A tournament this season as a junior.
"It's one of my motivations," Craig said of his family's success.
The 1998 Hurricanes team picture is the intersection for the Craigs. Marshall's two cousins, Luke and Ryan, were on the Canes that season. His father, Ed, is kneeling at the left side of the photo. Marshall, just a toddler at the time, is standing in front of him.
Ed was a Manatee wrestler in the early 1980s, and he brought Marshall to practices and meets when his family returned to the program. Marshall soaked in the atmosphere and the culture. Even though he didn't wrestle in his first competitive match until fifth grade, Marshall grew up in the wrestling room. When he finally joined the Manatee Kids club as a sixth-grader, he was given a throwback singlet reserved for those with a legacy. But first he had to decide for himself that he wanted to be a wrestler. No family member would make that choice for him.
Throughout elementary school, Craig was a football player, playing in the junior pee wee division alongside Chance Sharbono, who now wrestles for Braden River. Sharbono's ties to wrestling were similar to Craig's -- his father, Cezar Sharbono, was an assistant coach at Southeast at the time -- only he began at a younger age. By fifth grade, he finally talked Craig into wres
tling with him in the Seminoles' youth program. As soon as Craig came off the field, he told his dad of his desire to wrestle.
"The hairs on the back of my neck stood up," Ed Craig said.
Years of plastering wrestling posters in his bedroom and bringing him to meets finally paid off.
The first goal Ed set for his son wasn't a number of wins -- he wanted Marshall to wrestle in 50 matches during his first year. He quickly hit 50 and pushed the goal back to 75. Then he hit 75 and they moved the mark to 100.
By the end of his fifth-grade year, Craig had wrestled 106 matches. His record didn't climb above .500 until his 77th match, although Ed never told him his record.
"Some of the kids he was losing at the beginning of the year he was actually beating at the end of the year," Ed said.
Marshall spent one year Noles' kids club, where his father helped coach, before becoming part of the Manatee Mafia during sixth grade. For five of the last seven years -- as an eighth-grader he wrestled at Brandon -- he has represented the best parts of the Mafia nickname head coach Andrew Gugliemini has adopted for the program.
Craig has embraced legacy as motivation. When he first got to high school, he didn't weigh 100 pounds. He earned most-improved honors at the end of the season and won again after his sophomore season.
"It's the good things. It's the family, it's the brotherhood," Gugliemini said. "We have each other's back. The Craigs definitely are a big part of that."
After three seasons at Manatee, Craig now has his own place on the wall. Craig won 61 matches this season and recovered from a third-round loss at the 3A tournament to win a bronze medal during his second trip to Kissimmee.
Craig will have one more season to separate entirely separate his legacy from his family's with a state championship. And then he'll cede the mat to the next Craig. Ryan has a middle-school son named Riley. He's in Manatee's kids club right now.
"It set the bar high," Craig said. "I've still got some work to do."
Honorable mentions
MANATEE -- Charles Small, junior, 145; Matt McAleer, junior, 160; Connor Morang, junior, 170; Brandon Dossey, freshman, 182
LAKEWOOD RANCH -- Hunter Reed, junior, 120; Dylan Cameron, senior, 132; Nate Lancaster, senior, 220
PALMETTO -- Dom Bass, junior, 152; Nathan Heidenreich, senior, heavyweight
BRADEN RIVER -- Riley Dunn, sophomore, 106; Lucas Romano, junior, 126; Chance Sharbono, junior, 138
SOUTHEAST -- Jonathan Locke, junior, 152; Stephen Kelle, junior, 170; Darrien Grant, junior, 195
BRADENTON CHRISTIAN -- Alan Morano, eighth, 113.
David Wilson, Herald sports writer, can be contacted at 941-745-7057 or on Twitter @DBWilson2.
This story was originally published May 10, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Prep wrestling | All-Area Player of the Year Marshall Craig follows family legacy to success at Manatee ."