McKenzie Occiano Collins is a sophomore at Savannah Arts Academy where she not only is a tennis and volleyball star for the Panthers, but she is also a top student with a 95 grade point average. For this year’s season in tennis, she is currently undefeated. In volleyball last year, she was the only freshman chosen for the varsity team. This year Collins was a sophomore on the varsity team, and her team won in the region competition, defeating their rivals at Islands High School.
Collins became interested in tennis when, at about the age of five, she and her mother would play a game of keep away with her dogs. “We had this back pad where we parked the cars, and we would hit the dogs’ tennis balls over their heads. So that’s kind of how I first started playing,” says Collins. “I started training soon after that, and then when I was about ten years old I started playing in the USTA tournament circuit.”
Last year, Collins’s tennis team won in the region’s division and made it to the Final Four. That feat and her outstanding statistics won her 2013 Girls Tennis Player of the Year Award by the Savannah Morning News. “It was awesome. When I first found out, I was so excited and then, only being a freshman and being awarded Player of the Year, made me ten times more excited,” says Collins.
Collin’s coach, Karin Best says, “Collins is a well-rounded athlete and a positive influence on the team. She’s never had a mean word to say to anyone, and when switching sides during her match, she will cheer on her teammates on the other courts. She consistently works at improving her game. She’s had an awesome serve. She just knocks the stew out of it. I’ve also never seen anyone else as good as her at reading her opponent’s weaknesses. I was very pleasantly surprised at how smart of a player she was at outwitting her opponent.”
“Whenever we are warming up, I look at my opponent’s attitude on the court. I hit them different kinds of balls to see how they react to them. It gives me a sense and feel for the person,” says Collins. “As we build the points I keep looking for weaknesses. The first four games are very crucial in learning your opponent and sizing them up.”
“She works hard to get where she is,” says her mother, Beth Occiano. “Watching her play is amazing. She’s got an attack game. That’s just her style. Her coach says she’s got a Sharapova-type attack. She uses her height to her advantage, especially at the net. She’s also an excellent doubles player. It’s rewarding in the sense of team environment because it isn’t just her on the court. I’m her number-one fan.”
Adds Collins: “I like travelling and getting to see my friends from different states at the tournaments. At the tournaments there’s a doubles option so, last tournament, I got to play with a girl from Atlanta and made a new friend. It’s really fun.”
Collins has been an accomplished athlete and student since middle school. She earned a high ranking in both the Southern and the Georgia divisions of USTA Junior Girls Tennis. She also won the William Bell Award in 2012 from Hancock Day School. Collins says this is her most sentimental award because it speaks for who she is as a person. “It’s an award given to only one person that embodies the values of the school and the characteristics that William Bell, the president of Hancock Day School, had envisioned as the perfect student. That school will always be a part of me and that award meant a lot to me,” says Collins.
Collins is a participant in various clubs and a member of multiple honor society groups. She also volunteers her time with the Savannah Area Tennis Association, teaching kids to play tennis at afterschool programs and summer camps. “It was really special because you see a big smile cross their faces when they hit the ball over the net, and they enjoy it so much,” says Collins.
She recently won first place in the Medicine and Health Science category for the Savannah Regional Science and Engineering Fair. “I worked with a great group of girls. We were all kind of perfectionists about it. The experiment was about the sugar concentrations of apple juice and false labeling, how that can be tied to childhood obesity and diabetes. One of our questions was ‘Is it healthier to drink soda?’ What we found was they both had the same amount of sugar. We determined that if you are going to drink apple juice, that fresh pressed, all natural, organic juices had far less concentrated sugars in them and are better for you.”
She is participating in the communications major at SAA. In alliance with the Future Business Leaders of America, her team placed third in the FBLA Region Leadership Conference under the marketing category. “The FBLA is such an awesome organization. Even though we didn’t make it to the state competition, it got me really interested in the field of marketing for maybe something I’d like to explore in college. It taught me a lot about social media marketing and real world applications of marketing. I personally like that field a lot. It was fun.”
When asked about what her goals were for the rest of the tennis season Collin says, “I want the whole shebang. I wanted it last year. I want it this year. I want it every year. I think we’re capable of winning state. If we can make sure everyone is on the same page, if we all give one-hundred and ten percent, and we are all invested in it, we can do anything.”
Favorites
Women’s Tennis: Eugenie Bouchard
Men’s Tennis: John Isner or Roger Federer
Who would you most like to meet: the men’s slopestyle skiing team that swept the podium at Sochi
Where would you most like to travel: Anywhere and everywhere. I love adventure.
Superpower: I would want some kind of levitation so that I wouldn’t have to pick up the tennis balls by hand after practice.
Academic Athlete/Coastal Edition/May 2014
McKenzie Occiano Collins
Coach Karin Best
Savannah Arts Academy
Savannah, Georgia
Ruby Hilliard
You Just Got Served
