Sister Jean dead: National icon during Loyola’s Final Four run

Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, a sweet, quick-witted nun who became a national phenomenon for her unwavering support of the Loyola University Chicago basketball team during its magical run to the Final Four in 2018, died Thursday, the school announced. She was 106 years old.

Sister Jean, as she was known, was 98 years old during Loyola’s March Madness episode. Her ever-present smile and the sparkle in her eyes were trademarks as she cheered on a little-known underdog team that scored upset after upset before falling in the semifinals.

After each victory, she was pushed onto the field in her wheelchair and Loyola players and coaches flocked to her, believing Sister Jean to be the perpetrator of divine intervention.

“Just having her around, her presence and her aura, when you see her, it’s like the world is just great because of her spirit and her belief in us and Loyola basketball,” Loyola guard Marques Townes said at the time.

For her part, the lifelong nun downplayed any heavenly impact, even as she led the Ramblers in pregame prayers in her role as team chaplain.

“At the end of the prayer, I always ask God to make sure the scoreboard says the Ramblers have the big W,” she told the Chicago Tribune. “God always hears, but maybe He thinks it’s better for us to do the ‘L’ rather than the ‘W,’ and we have to accept that.”

Sister Jean lived on the top floor of Regis Hall, a campus dormitory that housed primarily freshmen. She broke her left hip in a fall a few months before the March Madness race, requiring the use of a wheelchair. But once recovered, the barely 5-foot-tall firebrand was very mobile in his brown Loyola Nikes.

She compiled scouting reports on opponents and hand-delivered them to the coaching staff. She would send encouraging emails to players and coaches after games, celebrating or consoling them depending on the outcome.

“If I had a tie or didn’t like the team like I thought I did,” Loyola star forward Donte Ingram said at the time, “she would tell me, ‘Keep your head up. They were out to get you tonight, but you still found a way to come out of it.’ Just stuff like that.

Sister Jean could also joke quickly. And it was hardly erased. Told that the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum had sold a record number of Sister Jean statuettes, she cracked during a special session with the media at the Final Four: “I don’t say this with pride, but I think the company might retire when they’re done making my bobbleheads.”

Even the Covid shutdown couldn’t dampen his morale. In 2021, at the age of 102, Sister Jean traveled to Indianapolis and watched Loyola beat top-seeded Illinois 71-58 to earn a spot in that year’s Sweet 16. Ramblers players waved to him in the stands after the game.

“It was a great moment,” Sister Jean told reporters. “We held on the whole time. At the end, seeing the scoreboard said the W belonged to Loyola, that whole game was so exciting.”

Dolores Bertha Schmidt was born in San Francisco on August 21, 1919, the eldest of three children. She felt the call to become a nun in third grade, and after high school she joined a convent in Dubuque, Iowa.

After taking her vows, she returned to California and became an elementary school teacher, first at St. Bernard School in Glassell Park before moving in 1946 to St. Charles Borromeo School in North Hollywood, where she also coached several sports, including basketball. She received a bachelor’s degree from Mount St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles in 1949.

“At midday, during lunch on the playground, I would ask the boys to play against the girls,” she told The Athletic. “I told them, ‘I know you have to hold back because you’re playing all over the court, but we have to make our girls strong.’ And they made them strong.

Among her students were Cardinal Roger Mahony, who served as archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985 to 2011, Father Thomas Rausch, chair of the theology department at Loyola Marymount, and Sister Mary Milligan, who became the first American-born superior general of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Mary.

Sister Jean earned a master’s degree from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles in 1961 and took a teaching position in Chicago at Mundelein College, a school near Loyola that was then all-women. She later served as dean.

Mundelein merged with Loyola in 1991, and a few years later Sister Jean became team chaplain, a position she held until earlier this year.

“In many roles at Loyola over more than 60 years, Sister Jean has been an invaluable source of wisdom and grace to generations of students, faculty and staff,” Loyola President Mark C. Reed said in a statement. “Even though we feel grief and a sense of loss, there is great joy in her legacy. Her presence was a profound blessing to our entire community and her spirit lives on in thousands of lives. In her honor, we can aspire to share with others the love and compassion that Sister Jean shared with us.”

When asked about her legacy, Sister Jean told the Chicago Tribune that she hoped to be remembered as a person of service to others.

“The legacy I want is that I helped people and I wasn’t afraid to give my time to people and teach them to be positive about what’s going on and teach them to do good for others,” she said. “And be willing to take a risk. People might say, ‘Why didn’t I do that?’ Well, go ahead and try it, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone.