The week before Hannah Wojnowski turned 6 years old, the Bradley-Bourbonnais girls volleyball team scored a 2-1 win at Bishop McNamara to begin their streak of All-City championships. A kindergartener then and now a senior middle hitter/right side for the Boilermakers, Wojnowski celebrated her 18th birthday in style Wednesday night, helping the Boilers keep their All-City stronghold with a 2-0 win for their 13th straight All-City title.

Wojnowski, who called it “an honor” to continue the streak, never could have envisioned celebrating her birthday by standing alongside her Boiler teammates and completing a monumental second-set comeback that saw them trail by as many as nine points before roaring back to win 28-26 that sealed a 2-0 win on their home court.

“No, I couldn’t (have imagined a better birthday gift),” Wojnowski said. “This is what I was hoping for.”

It was an auspicious start for the Boilers, who, like in Tuesday’s All-City win at Kankakee, took an early lead and – aside from a brief 2-1 Fightin’ Irish lead – didn’t trail the rest of the way to a 25-20 first-set win.

But after their deep rotation of middles, outside hitters and right sides found success filling McNamara’s defensive holes at the start, the Fightin’ Irish started to take control in the second set. With the second set knotted at nine apiece, back-to-back blocks from Jersey Slone and an ace Carley Johnson kickstarted a 9-0 run to give the Irish an 18-9 lead and gym full of momentum.

Wojnowski secured a kill to stop the bleeding, eventually allowing the Boilers to cut their deficit to 19-12 on Liv Woolman’s ace. The Irish drew closer to a second-set win when Kate Dole’s kill put them up 22-18, but after back-to-back Elena Shold kills, a McNamara hitting error and a Harper Yuska ace, the hosts suddenly found themselves tied at 22.

“I feel like we just really told ourselves that we needed to buckle down,” Woolman said. “We knew that we weren’t playing our game for a little bit there, but just coming in and putting in all effort, all out there, to get a dub.”

The Irish scored the next two points and once again looked to have the set in hand, but the Boilers again bounced back with a Woolman kill, McNamara error and Harper Tollefson tip to go up 25-24. Thompson quickly tied it at 25 with a forceful spike, and after Wojnowski countered with a kill of her own to go up 26-25, a Boiler error again tied things at 26.

But following a McNamara serve that sailed out of bounds, a lengthy volley ended with an Irish double hit that completed the comeback and kept the All-City title on North Street.

Boilers coach Leigh Reiniche is no stranger to the program and the rivalry, a former player and assistant coach before taking over as head coach in 2019. She called Wednesday’s win the “craziest comeback” she can recall, crediting both her young team with six sophomores for showing no fear and the school’s Red Surge spirit section for the improbable finish.

“For them to stick through it and not give up on each other, to look at the scoreboard and not fall, but jump in it and say, ‘let’s try,’ they were running through people, jumping over people, diving and dodging,” Reiniche said. “They wanted it more.

“ … I told them to embrace the environment," she continued. “No one has an environment like us. Our Red Surge is unremarkable, yelling and screaming, giving each other banter back and forth. They didn’t give up on us, they gave us energy and we put it right back into the game.”

For the Fightin’ Irish (3-5), Wednesday’s finish was a frustrating one. After two-set sweeps of Grace Christian and Kankakee last Tuesday and Wednesday, the Irish played a quality Providence program to a third set Thursday, and in the eyes of coach Ryan Thomas, were rounding into form before stumbling in Wednesday’s high-intensity affair.

“The main reason why it’s frustrating is because we played so well last week and were going in the direction,” Thomas said. “We played Providence, who’s gone to Super Sectionals the past two years and returned everyone, and we showed we can play with that type of talent.

“We just mentally take ourselves out of this game,” he added. “It could be at our place, it could be here, we just for some reason feel like the pressure’s on us when [the Boilers] are the ones who have all the pressure.”