Inside Ava Renninger’s milestone night that led Archbishop Wood to PCL title

Ava Renninger and Lauren Greer were doing their best to stay focused on their worksheet in anatomy class at Archbishop Wood on Monday.

Meanwhile, their peers badgered them with questions about the big game at the Palestra later that day.

How many points are you going to score? How much are you going to win by? Are you nervous?

Eventually, Greer broke, removed her pencil from the paper, and leaned over to Renninger.

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“You only need 17 to reach 1,000 career points,” Greer said.

Renninger paused and processed. She had forgotten.

“Oh,” she said. “That’d be cool.”

“She was so nonchalant about it,” Greer recalled.

Renninger’s reaction was minimal because the senior point guard had only one image in her head — cutting down the net.

But the Fairleigh-Dickinson recruit accomplished both feats at the Palestra on Monday night.

She scored a game-high 22 points, bringing her career total to 1,005 with the District 12 Class 5A championship and the state tournament left to play. She also recorded four rebounds and two assists, pushing Wood past Archbishop Carroll, 54-52, in double overtime for the Philadelphia Catholic League title.

True to her unselfish nature, Renninger wasn’t keeping track of her point total during the championship.

“I had no idea,” she said. “I was just trying to make my free throws.”

Renninger almost missed out on 1,000 and the championship, though, after missing two free throws with 25.1 seconds left in the fourth quarter. Fortunately, Wood survived the final seconds with a defensive stand to end regulation at 41-41. Then the Vikings got through the first overtime period tied at 45.

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The senior flushed her mistakes away and went 8-for-8 from the stripe in the second overtime period in a pressure-packed Palestra. Her third and fourth free throws of the extra-extra frame marked her 1,000th and 1,001st career points, and put the Vikings up 49-45 with 41.8 seconds left.

“I definitely was frustrated with myself because I could have closed it out at the end of [regulation],” Renninger said. “I knew if I was given another opportunity to close the game out that I was going to knock those shots down because it’s my last chance. It’s the last opportunity to do it.

“I wanted to leave it all out there.”

Wood coach Mike McDonald was surprised when Renninger didn’t make the foul shots in regulation. But he wasn’t surprised about how Renninger gathered herself and rebounded.

“She’s not really afraid of the big moment,” the ninth-year head coach said. “I’m sure she was nervous, just like every other girl, but she’s a competitor. I think that drives her and I think that’s why she’s able to show up on a big stage like this.”

» READ MORE: Why doesn’t the Catholic League add a shot clock?

Renninger got off to a strong start, scoring nine points in the first half. Carroll started to make life difficult for Renninger through stretches of the second half, forcing a couple of loose balls and steals.

One steal led to Carroll’s tying bucket near the end of the first overtime period, with Abigail McFillin finishing off an assist from Brooke Wilson.

Renninger had only four points on 1-of-3 shooting from the field in the second half. She didn’t register a shot in the first overtime period, either.

“It was a little sloppy on my part,” she said. “But I’m glad we just stuck it through.”

She hit four more free throws in the final 40 seconds of the second overtime, giving Wood enough to squeak by.

It was Wood’s 15th title game in 18 years but only its fifth PCL crown. After falling in last season’s championship to Lansdale Catholic, Renninger delivered the Vikings’ first title since the 2020-21 season.

“Last year’s loss hit [those] seven seniors very hard,” Renninger said. “They all wished us good luck heading into this game. We wanted to win it for them also.”

With all the hype built up by their classmates throughout the day and the adversity she faced at the charity stripe, Renninger could have let the moment get to her.

But nothing fazed her, not even the career milestone she set on the biggest stage in Philly hoops, because she knew what mattered.

“The plaque was more important to me,” Renninger said. “I could have had five, two, three, eight points. It didn’t matter to me, as long as we won at the end of the day.”

This story was produced as part of a partnership between The Inquirer and City of Basketball Love, a nonprofit news organization that covers high school and college basketball in the Philadelphia area while also helping mentor the next generation of sportswriters. This collaboration will help boost coverage of the city’s vibrant amateur basketball scene, from the high school ranks up through the Big 5 and beyond.