Van Buren wrestler Eva Garcia claims third state championship

It was a successful title defense for Van Buren senior wrestler Eva Garcia. For the third time in her career as a Lady Pointer, Garcia claimed championship gold with a decisive run through the Class 5A 120-pound weight class at the recent girls state tournament held in Little Rock.

Wrestling as the top seed at state, Garcia earned two pinfall victories in the quarterfinal and semifinal rounds. Then in the title match, she got a decisive 19-3 win, resulting in a technical fall and her second straight 5A 120 championship.

“I’m a very anxious person, so I was like, I should be going into this like feeling confident, feeling kind of cocky, but that’s not the person I am; I’m a very nervous person when it comes to stuff like this,” Garcia said. “It’s a big moment being at the state tournament, especially being my senior year, so I freaked out a little, even though I’ve been in that situation before. I kind of took my coaches words to heart before every match. They told me, you know what to do, like just go out there and wrestle, and keep a level head out there.”

Her other state title came her freshman year in 2023, when she won it in the 140 class.

“Honestly, it still doesn’t even seem real,” Garcia said. “It doesn’t. I would have never thought, my first time stepping into the wrestling room, being like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna come back in here one day and my face is gonna be on the hundred wins wall or that state championship wall.’ But now, it definitely will be, and it will be a sight to see.”

Not bad for someone who didn’t pick up the sport until she was in middle school. Garcia quickly took to wrestling, first learning it under Van Buren assistant coach Dakota Petree, the brother of head coach John Petree.

“The biggest thing for me to learn was to kind of get over the fact that I was gonna get beat up,” Garcia said. “It’s a contact sport, you’re gonna get beat up before you learn anything and before you learn to be good.”

Garcia, who finished her senior season 36-4, remarked another satisfying thing about it was she finally won a regional title after coming up short her first three seasons on the varsity level. She was equally proud of the fact that her team finished as the state runner-up, trailing only Searcy, citing the fact this was the first season the Lady Pointers had a representative in all 14 weight classes at state.

“This year has definitely been the best group of girls that we’ve ever had in our program,” Garcia said. “They were great at keeping the energy, and they’re great at keeping everybody’s heads up. This year’s team was unlike any any team we’ve had before.”

Garcia is now preparing to play on Van Buren’s softball team, where she primarily pitches. Garcia, who had a 3.8 grade-point average her previous semester, is also hoping to get the chance to continue her wrestling career in college.

But Garcia will get to return to Little Rock pretty soon in a wrestling capacity, as she serves as a volunteer youth coach, and her team’s state tournament will be held there.

“You think you know your sport until you’re trying to explain it to a 5-year-old and it’s testing,” she said. “But it’s so worth it and it’s definitely helped me a lot because it’s made me think about things that I never would have thought of. You don’t really know something until you try to teach it, and that’s become very, very clear to me.”