Daily Journal Wrestler of the Year: Menlo-Atherton’s Kiely Tabaldo

Kiely’s mother Wendy served as the Bears’ head coach, whose specialty was doing all the paperwork, she’d like to joke. On the technical side, brother Royal Tabaldo was the assistant coach who worked as Kiely’s cornerman. It’s fitting then that Royal helped his kid sister take her place as the queen of the mat in a prestigious line of M-A girls’ wrestlers.

“Me and him have a really close bond because it’s only us two,” Kiely said. “And for a majority or my life, it’s just been us. We’ve been best friends and now he’s my coach. So, we’re very close.”

Entering the year with a 57-10 career record, Kiely had already made a name for herself on the Central Coast Section wrestling scene. She’d won two CCS championships in two years — with no wrestling postseason in 2021 due to the pandemic — and went on to three-peat at 111s this season. In the state tournament, she previously reached the podium twice, with a fifth-place finish at 101s in 2020 followed by fourth place at 111s last season.

This year was, well, perfect. A healthy, determined and — above all else — comfortable Kiely rolled to a perfect 35-0 record, culminating in her win over Paloma Valley’s Karissa Turnwall at the CIF State Wrestling Championships in Bakersfield.

It’s the perfect recipe to name Kiely Tabaldo the Daily Journal Wrestler of the Year.

“I would like to say: ‘Yeah, I have nothing to complain about,’” Kiely said. “I just wish I had more time with the team, honestly. Other than that, I’m really happy with how I performed.”

It would be easy to look at Kiely’s dysphoria about not having enough time to enjoy the varsity wrestling high life as a result of the lost pandemic season. One might even call it an inevitability of youth. For Kiely, though, it proved a challenge to find her niche within an M-A wrestling team that was already established when she moved to town.

A native of Sunnyvale, Kiely moved to Atherton with her family just before starting high school. Royal was a 2019 graduate of Evergreen Valley in San Jose before committing to wrestle at Menlo College. It was a perfect move for Kiely, who took after her brother and started wrestling in grade school.

By the time she started exceling at the sport in middle school, heading to M-A — a school that touted, at the time, two previous state wresting champs, and would add a third when Alexia Bensoussan claimed the 131s state title in 2022 — seemed like a perfect chance to join a thriving wrestling culture.

“Little did I know they were all going to graduate and leave me behind,” Kiely said.

M-A’s two previous state champs, Chelsea Wilson and Fola Akinola, had already graduated when Kiely arrived. As a freshman, she bonded with senior Anna Smith, who graduated in 2020. Bensoussan, a year older than Kiely, graduated in 2022.

So, this year, M-A made a radical move, bringing in Kiely’s mother Wendy to serve as head coach. Royal had already joined the staff the previous year as an assistant. But, with the girls’ team set to return just six wrestlers, Wendy and Royal made the decision to merge the boys’ and girls’ teams into one.

“What I see is when I combine the girls and the boys, they get the best of both worlds … and it just increases the team’s culture as well,” Royal said. “It builds the team dynamic where they all feel comfortable with each other.”

Many of Kiely’s sparring partners would have been boys anyway. Branham senior Scotty Moore and Stuart Hall senior Joseph Hubbard were among those who Kiely practiced with. At M-A, though, it created a competitive environment where Kiely thrived, while Wendy and Royal provided the support system after the void left by exiting graduates from previous years.

“She hasn’t had this before,” Royal said. “Even back then in third grade, watching me wrestle for the first time and soaking it all up, she’s always seen the negative side when it came to my wrestling career. … Joining a team where they didn’t want her originally, she was an outsider to them, but as soon as me and my mom stepped in, you could just see a shift in her confidence. … She just looked like she belonged with these guys.”

Not that the idea of Royal joining the coaching staff initially seemed like the greatest idea to Kiely.

“Sometimes me and him can’t see eye to eye on certain things, so going in I was a little worried about that,” Kiely said. “So, inside the room he’s my coach, outside the room he’s my brother. But overall, it was a really good experience. And mainly he was doing it just for me.”

The story of Kiely’s state championship run sums up the relationship between Kiely and Royal perfectly.

The march toward destiny nearly got derailed in the state championship semifinals. Notorious for taking naps during wrestling tournaments, Kiely overslept prior to her semifinal match with Walnut junior Deandra Meza. When her name was initially announced to report to the mat, Kiely didn’t show. When she finally did, it was with all the frenzy of a kid who hit the snooze alarm one too many times.

“So, she’s all groggy … she wasn’t fully in the zone and that probably caused her to have the match a little too close,” Royal said. “But she won the match on technical ability.”

Kiely won a 7-4 decision in the semifinals, and advanced to face Turnwall. This time she was wide awake and navigated a seamless 3-0 decision. The championship victory was expected. What caught everyone off guard, especially Royal, was Kiely’s show of emotion at the final buzzer.

“Kiely is known to be emotionless on the mat,” Royal said. “She’s known to hide and be humble.”

Kiely was flowing from the start, scoring a two-point takedown on a leg shot in the first period. In the second, she scored a one-point escape. From there, it was a dance with destiny. And when it was over, and she finally realized that state-championship dream, the emotions Kiely typically keeps to herself were impossible to temper, as she welled up with tears and sprinted to her corner to nearly tackle her brother by throwing all 111 of her pounds into a giant bear hug.

“She doesn’t even like hugging me, that’s the joke,” Royal said. “I have to force her to hug me. And now she just jumped in my arms.”

At the end of the day, though, the two are still brother and sister — from an emotional perspective, a dynamic that is perhaps the best practice for the rigors of wrestling.

Royal, a consummate car guy, compared coaching wrestling to rebuilding a car.

“When she started wrestling, she was always a Lamborghini,” Royal joked. “It’s always tough trying to add parts to a masterpiece. But I always try to add something.”

Kiely’s response was merely a sisterly smirk and three little words: “That’s pretty funny.”