Of the 330 athletes who qualify for the 2026 NCAA Division I Championships in Cleveland in March, there will be several wrestlers from this northern Ohio community, which has been a hotbed for elite wrestling in this country.

Charese Robinson, the mother of Little Rock’s 157-pound Jaivon Jones, is praying her son will be one of those Clevelanders competing March 19-21 in Rocket Arena. But she also knows how difficult that challenge will be for Jaivon, who hopes to end a tough seven-year college career with a first appearance at the national tournament. 

“I’ve thought about this a thousand times,” Robinson said. “It will definitely be a dream come true for me if it finally comes true for himself. We thank God for the opportunity just for him to make it there. He’s very resilient and once he puts his mind to something, it is very hard to change it. His determination to get to the NCAAs has been a dream of his and he is doing whatever it takes for him to get there.”

That’s because Charese is one of Jaivon’s diverse family, who truly understands how tough her son’s journey has been the past 12 years, when he made wrestling his passion.

“As a child, he absolutely loved this sport,” said Charese, who remarried during her years as a wrestling parent. “He started at the age of 4, and although he played other sports like baseball and football, wrestling is something he’s been doing almost his entire life.”

But life off the mat was not perfect for Jaivon, who attended four different high schools in the Cleveland area because of family issues during his prep career. He started his high school days in Elyria, Ohio, 30 miles west of Cleveland, but was forced to move to Garfield Heights in Cleveland nine weeks into his freshman year when his father, Jerry Jones suffered a brain aneurysm.

Fortunately, his father has survived these years and wrestling helped Jaivon deal with such stress and brought him closer to his father, a former high school wrestler who introduced Jaivon to the sport.

“It increased my love for wrestling because it was a way for me and him to stay connected with it and it grew to where I loved what I do,” recalled Jaivon, now 24. “Wrestling became something to help me deal with the stresses of life. I was able to get focused on wrestling and my love for it grew.”

That focus was one reason Jones started to excel in the sport. He moved to Shaker Heights as a sophomore and qualified for his first state tournament a year later, placing fifth in the Division I Ohio state tournament in 2018. 

“It made it easier because the wrestling training is so tough sometimes to where the other parts of life become simple,” he said. “I had two choices — either choose the path that helps you become the best version of yourself or choose a path that won’t help you.”

Speaking of different paths, the family moved again before his senior year to nearby Macedonia in 2019, when he placed sixth for Nordonia High School after he entered the postseason with an undefeated record.

“I did not have a great three days of wrestling during that tournament,” Jones said.

But Jones still earned a Division I scholarship at Northern Illinois, where he spent five years with the Huskies (2019-24), compiling a respectable 51-38 record. But he never advanced past three MAC championships (2022-24) at either 141 or 149 pounds and finished as high as third in 2023.

But Jones did earn a degree in kinesiology and a minor in business entrepreneurship at Northern Illinois, before opting to use his extra “Covid” year of eligibility at Little Rock in 2024-25. 

“I had really good memories of NIU, but it became a point in time where I needed to make some changes,” he said. “I fell short of the national tournament three times and I felt it was best for me to make a change.”

Jones said his many transfers as a prep helped him adjust to a new college environment at Little Rock, where he will also earn a master’s degree in sports management this May. But his mat time with the Trojans was delayed one more season after he suffered another injury a year ago.

“I had to take a medical redshirt when I tore the pec off the bone in practice,” he said.

But he continued to believe in himself and trusted that everything takes a process.

“I believe one day my day will come, but didn’t know when it would happen,” said Jones, who credits a former trainer for helping him focus on the acronym “W.I.N” which stands for “What’s Important Now?”

“It makes me focus on the moment,” he added. “I know I’m going to win. I just don’t know when.”

Jones also learned how to balance time between wrestling, friends and school.

“Being the best at all three is a very hard task,” he said. “You can have friends, but you may meet some who won’t help you wrestle well or succeed at school. I try to keep the main thing the main thing and not get too high or too low. When I got here, I had to focus on being in the moment.”

This season, Jones has compiled a 12-7 record through January, which includes a 5-2 mark at the Southern Scuffle earlier this month. But another knee injury forced him to miss the team’s dual at Oregon State on Jan. 23. He believes he will return to the lineup and still hopes to compete in Little Rock’s Feb. 6 dual at Oklahoma State. 

Jones still has time to earn quality wins to earn an at-large for the 2026 NCAAs, but he also knows much of his NCAA-qualifying fate will be determined at the Pac-12 Championships, March 6, in San Luis Obispo, Calif.

Fortunately, he relies on things he’s learned from coaches in his past, including Erik Burnett, his former youth club coach and the former coach at Elyria High, or later from coaches like Marlon Yarbrough and Dan Fishback when Jones represented the Arsenal Wrestling Club.

But mostly, Jones admits his religious faith has helped him overcome many past issues, starting with the many Bible readings he shared on a nightly basis with his grandmother, Elaine Williams, during his high school and early college years.

“It became a cool thing that whenever anything got hard, I’d stay with the routine,” he recalled.

Today, the Little Rock coaches have also helped him continue to rely on God.

“I asked (head) coach Neil (Erisman) what I should read and he said, ‘the Bible, different books in the Bible,’” Jaivon said. “He’s helped me try to shift my thinking and not be so much about performing but being the best version of me. When all is said and done, I want to go to heaven. I know my life is in Christ and not just what I do in wrestling, which one day will be gone.”

How would Jones like to be remembered?

He recalls something that happened at the 2018 NCAA Championships, also held in Cleveland, where he attended as a 17-year-old high school wrestler.

“I remember them interviewing (former Ohio State NCAA champ) Nathan Tomasello,” Jones recalled. “He said he wanted his legacy to be that of a warrior.

“Now I would like mine to be someone who worked hard and gave it everything that I had. And no matter the outcome and whatever cards are dealt, I tried to be the best version of me. I can live with the results whenever my career is over if I gave what would make the best version of me.”