LAKELAND — It’s been quite a 15 months for Auburndale junior McKenna Battilla. It began with her sustaining an ACL injury in late January of 2024 that caused her to miss her sophomore tennis season and junior soccer season. It ended in late April of 2025 with two days of grueling tennis where she battled in marathon tennis matches at the state tournament where she pushed herself like she has never done before.
In the end, while she is returning to form in soccer, she showed in the tennis season that she again is the best player in Polk County and matched her accomplishments as a freshman by winning county and district titles and reaching the overall state semifinals.
Battilla is The Ledger’s 2025 Girls Tennis Player of the Year.
Although the accomplishments on the court matched her freshman season, Battilla wasn’t quite all the way back, she said.
“I felt like I was back to where I was, if not stronger than I was,” she said “I just think mentally, I wasn’t and that caused me to play tight and not be as consistent, especially throughout state when it meant more and I started playing more nervous. So I think physically whenever I’m practicing and was training, I was playing 10 times better than I was before, but once it gets into those matches, I think it’s just a mental thing that I still need confidence back rather than physically.”
During the regular season, she won all 10 matches with a 116-6 record. She was equally dominant in the county tournament. With defending champion Nya Kerr out with an injury, Battilla defeated Frostproof Hannah Windham, 6-1, 6-1, in the East finals then defeated Jada Hutto in the overall final, 6-1, 6-0. It was in the East tournament, however, where she faced a challenge for the first time as Winter Haven’s Sophie Bose tried to keep pace before losing 8-5.
In the district final, Battilla defeated/ Sebring’s Ava Church, 6-1, 6-0.
Then came the state tournament. Battilla was supposed to have a bye but two players weren’t put in the original brackets. When the new brackets came out, she had a first-round match and two players with lower rating received byes.
Including doubles competition — Battilla and Ava Mulling won the district title at No. 1 doubles to qualify for state — Battilla was on the court for around nine hours in 90-plus-degree heat. Each match came down to a tiebreaker. She was supposed to play a fourth match, her second doubles match, on the first day but was forced to withdraw as she kept cramping up in the heat through the day.
Her first match on the second day also went to a third-set tiebreaker and in the individuals bracket finals — the overall state semifinal — she sustained a strained muscle in her hip and couldn’t finish the match.
“I was just so tight after cramping up in that battle on Monday, and then playing through the tightness and the soreness, it just got overstressed,” she said.
It’s a testament to her competitiveness and her will that she prevailed in the tiebreaker in all four matches, especially after losing the first sets.
“I’m definitely disappointed with how the entire thing went, but it really wasn’t in my control so it’s not annoying I could sit and dwell on,” she said. “I’m proud of myself because I didn’t expect to beat the No. 1 seed, but I disappointed at how it went because I feel I could have gone a lot better if the draw in the tournament was different.”
If nothing else, the experience fueled her desire to go back next year and be even better. Although soccer remains her primary sport, the USF-commit’s love of tennis remains as strong as ever.
The physical ups and downs of that 15-month stretch is hardly anything she wants to go through again, but she learned a lot about herself in enduring those physical challenges.
“My maturity and like as my mental mindset has gotten so much better because in the past whenever I would get down in a set or lose a set I would completely crumble, and the match was over,” she said. “But I think with going through such a hard thing with my knee and having to fight so hard to get back to walking, to running, to doing simple things that it really helped as an athlete mentally. The first set of the semifinals of the individuals (bracket), I didn’t really want to give up because I just was so used to always having to fight back and fight back. Going through what I did with my knee was almost like a blessing in disguise.”
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Auburndale’s Battilla battled back from injury to emerge as Polk’s top girls tennis player
Reporting by Roy Fuoco, Lakeland Ledger / The Ledger
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
