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An unlikely basketball hero died Thursday. Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt was chaplain for the men's basketball team at Loyola University Chicago. She was front and center when the Ramblers made it to the NCAA's Final Four in 2018, and that turned her into an international celebrity. Sister Jean was 106. Reporter Adora Namigadde has this remembrance.
ADORA NAMIGADDE, BYLINE: Before becoming a religious sister, Sister Jean's name was Dolores Bertha Schmidt. She was born in 1919 and grew up in a devout Catholic family in San Francisco, California. In her memoir, Sister Jean talked about maintaining a youthful spirit and how she played intramural basketball just as the sport was becoming popular for women and girls. She recounted how early on, when she was just 10 years old, she knew she wanted to become a religious sister.
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JEAN DOLORES SCHMIDT: I would pray in the morning, and I would ask God, please help me know what you want me to do, but tell me you want me to be a BVM sister.
NAMIGADDE: When she graduated from high school, Sister Jean did join the BVM sisters. That is, the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. As a member of that order, she spent many years teaching at Mundelein College for Women, the school founded by the BVM sisters in 1930 on Chicago's north side. The college became part of Loyola Chicago in 1991. And a few years later, Loyola's president offered Sister Jean a job helping student athletes maintain their grades for eligibility. That position ended up evolving into her chaplaincy of the men's basketball team. That's when she would tell players about the importance of a good sense of humor and hard work. Tom Welch joined Loyola's Ramblers in 2019 and says what he admired most about Sister Jean was her willpower.
TOM WELCH: Sometimes, as a student athlete, you struggle with motivation to get out of bed, get to class, go to practice, you know, kind of give it your all at everything you do in a day. And, you know, if she can do it, there's no reason I can't.
NAMIGADDE: Welch added it was also impressive to watch Sister Jean, the basketball connoisseur, constantly come up with game plans and scout teams they were playing. So perhaps no surprise that Sister Jean's claim to international fame came in her late 90s, when the Loyola men's basketball team made it to the Final Four for the first time in 32 years.
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UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER: Oh, on the buzzer. And the Ramblers are moving on.
NAMIGADDE: It was 2018, and there was Sister Jean, decked out in the school's maroon and gold regalia. The Ramblers received national attention in the school's historic run, winning some of the games with buzzer-beating shots. Sister Jean clapped her hands as she cheered on from the sidelines in her wheelchair all along the way. The team ended their March Madness basketball dream in a loss to University of Michigan.
In her memoir, "Waking Up With Purpose!" (ph), Sister Jean talked about the importance of setting aside daily quiet time and maintaining a forgiving spirit. Still, basketball was never far from her mind. Bill Burns (ph), a former Loyola athletic director, was particularly struck by the way Sister Jean faithfully watched games from home and kept in touch with the Ramblers during the COVID pandemic.
BILL BURNS: For somebody that's 80 years older than those guys, to still be able to maintain that relationship with them and have to adjust on the fly and do it in some ways technologically was pretty impressive.
NAMIGADDE: Sister Jean remained a campus celebrity and a Chicago icon because of her dedication to education, her camaraderie with students and her love of college basketball. But the relationship she had with God early on in life was always her first priority, and she had a simple wish.
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SCHMIDT: Well, when I die, I want to go to heaven, and I want my friends to be there too.
NAMIGADDE: In 2017, Sister Jean was inducted into the Loyola Ramblers Athletic Hall of Fame.
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NAMIGADDE: And to ensure that she is remembered here on Earth, Loyola erected a memorial for her outside the train stop near campus. It reads, home of the world-famous Sister Jean.
For NPR News, I'm Adora Namigadde in Chicago. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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