Daily Journal Girls’ Wrestler of the Year: Menlo-Atherton’s Eva Bhattacharya

Then, the well-traveled wrestler decided to keep traveling. With her family making the move from Los Altos to Menlo Park, Bhattacharya transferred to Menlo-Atherton, where she set out to build on the success she saw as an underclassman.

“I really enjoyed wrestling at St. Francis as I do at Menlo-Atherton too,” Bhattacharya said. “The team culture was amazing. I think our coach Joey Bareng did a really good job of bringing the team together and competing like it was a team sport.”

From Los Altos High School as a freshman to St. Francis as a sophomore, Bhattacharya emerged as a junior to earn Daily Journal Girls’ Wrestler of the Year honors.

Bhattacharya didn’t achieve all her goals — the game plan was to repeat as Central Coast Section champion and make a run at a state title. She did neither. What she did do, though, was singlehandedly keep the once prolific M-A girls’ wrestling program on the map in the CCS and CIF state tournaments, finishing runner-up at 100s at the CCS Masters finals.

She then charged through the 100s bracket at the CIF California State Wrestling Championships to reach the podium with a career-best fourth-place finish — though she wasn’t exactly celebrating that particular conclusion to her junior season.

“She should be more than happy and proud at that,” M-A head coach Wendy Tabaldo said. “I know we definitely are. So, she needs to look at the positive side of things sometimes.”

Bhattacharya has no problem staying positive — when she’s winning. That she did a lot of in 2025-26, posting a 38-6 record, while earning some impressive hardware. Including her CCS and CIF medals, and her first Peninsula Athletic League championship, her shining moment came Jan. 24 at the MidCals Classic held in the Northern California wrestling hotbed of Gilroy. Bhattacharya not only claimed the championship at 108s, she knocked off the No. 1 ranked wrestler in the state, Buchanan’s Marcia Nunez, in the finals via 11-5 decision.

From there, the junior made a tactical decision that would affect the last two months of her season. Bhattacharya decided to drop weight to be primed to contend at 100s through the postseason.

“After [Mid-Cals] I think that was just a decision on my end, my coaches, my parents, to see how competitive I can get,” Bhattacharya said. “We wanted to see if it’s possible this year. So, we thought: ‘Let’s get down to 100 and see how it turns out.’”

Bhattacharya places a lot of faith in her coaches, including M-A assistant Royal Tabaldo, who wrestled for the Menlo College men’s team when Bareng coached women’s wrestling for the Oaks. Royal Tabaldo also runs Royalty Wrestling Club, one of the many offseason clubs for which Bhattacharya has trained and competed in the freestyle arena.

Royal Tabaldo is a former middleweight wrestler, whose long, wiry limbs were an outlier. Standing 5-feet tall, Bhattacharya possesses a similarly unique reach.

“She can adapt and she’s definitely taken on his style of coaching and his style of wrestling,” Wendy Tabaldo said. “She’s not very tall herself ... but she has these long little limbs, which is similar to what Royal ... had. ... So, it’s good for him to work with her. He can definitely tailor to her body type really well.”

What Bhattacharya admittedly needs to refine is the mental game. Yes, she’s all smiles when things are going her way. The six losses she suffered this season, however, hit her disproportionately hard.

It took her pretty much the full week between the CCS and state tourneys to recover from her 7-0 loss to Gilroy senior Jaelle Cortez in the CCS Masters championship finals.

While finishing the year as San Mateo County’s top placer at the state finals, her quest for a state championship got derailed in the semifinals with a loss via major decision to unseeded Buchanan’s Alexandria Marin, whose unseeded standing came with a caveat; the freshman went on to win the state championship at 100s.

For Bhattacharya, the loss cost her twofold. Not only did it leave her two wins shy of a state title, her adverse reaction carried over to the consolation bracket, where she went on to lose her third-place match via second-period fall to Mountain View junior Kiana Lien.

“After that semifinal match, I could not pull myself out of it for my third-place match,” Bhattacharya said.

It’s a paradox Bhattacharya has been contending with since she arrived at M-A.

“It was the first time we were having her in the room on a daily basis ... and I think that is still a point of belief for her, just having that state of mind, that belief, that we have in her, that she is capable,” Wendy Tabaldo said. “But she’s got to buy in to it herself.”

Bhattacharya wasn’t the only wrestler from St. Francis’ big three to feel the postseason sting this season. None of them repeated as CCS champs, with Love taking third place at 130s, and Gao settling for fourth at 125s. Love, like Bhattacharya, will have one more shot as they are both juniors. Gao will have to take out any frustrations on the college ranks, as the senior is committed to wrestle at Columbia University.

“At the beginning my goal was actually to be a state champ,” Bhattacharya said. “So, obviously I’ve always had really big goals for myself and I’ve never believed that anything is impossible. ... I think that’s what makes me be able to land among the stars.”