Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, the previous Loyola Ramblers workforce chaplain that turned a well-known determine throughout the males’s basketball workforce’s 2018 run to the Remaining 4, has died at 106 years outdated, the college introduced Thursday evening in an announcement:
“Loyola College Chicago is tremendously saddened to verify the dying of Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, BVM. This can be a super lack of somebody who touched the lives of so many individuals. We admire everybody’s ideas & prayers throughout this tough time.”
Sister Jean served Loyola’s college students for greater than six a long time, retiring simply final month. She was a typical sight at Loyola sporting occasions, and garnered nationwide fame when her No. 11-seeded Ramblers launched into a Cinderella run within the NCAA Match, upsetting No. 6 Miami, No. 3 Tennessee, No. 7 Nevada and No. 9 Kansas State earlier than lastly falling to No. 3 Michigan within the Remaining 4.
Sister Jean was born Dolores Bertha Schmidt on August 21, 1919, and she or he joined the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1937. She started educating at Mundelein Faculty in 1961, and located her option to Loyola College Chicago when Mundelein merged with Loyola in 1991. Sister Jean turned the chaplain for the boys’s basketball workforce in 1994.
“In lots of roles at Loyola over the course of greater than 60 years, Sister Jean was a useful supply of knowledge and charm for generations of scholars, school, and employees,” Loyola president Mark C. Reed stated in an announcement. “Whereas we really feel grief and a way of loss, there’s nice pleasure in her legacy. Her presence was a profound blessing for our complete group and her spirit abides in hundreds of lives. In her honor, we will aspire to share with others the love and compassion Sister Jean shared with us.”
Whereas Sister Jean will probably be remembered by sports activities followers for her work with the Loyola basketball workforce, she was a lot, way more than that. She supplied religious assist for college students on the college, held weekly prayer teams for college students and began a program known as SMILE (College students Transferring Into the Lives of the Aged). This undertaking helped Loyola college students attain out to an assisted dwelling group named The Clare, and aimed to “type intergenerational — and significant — relationships.”
“That is being an individual for others by simply being your self,” Sister Jean as soon as stated. “That is the way in which I’m. I’ve to be myself. I inform college students that — you may see folks that you just admire, you are able to do a number of the issues they do, however it’s a must to be your self. God made you the one that you might be.”