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 Last 4, has died at 106 years previous, the college introduced Thursday night time in an announcement:
“Loyola College Chicago is tremendously saddened to substantiate the demise of Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, BVM. This can be a large lack of somebody who touched the lives of so many individuals. We respect 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 standard 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 Last 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 instructing at Mundelein Faculty in 1961, and located her solution 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 beauty for generations of scholars, school, and employees,” Loyola president Mark C. Reed mentioned in an announcement. “Whereas we really feel grief and a way of loss, there may be nice pleasure in her legacy. Her presence was a profound blessing for our total group and her spirit abides in 1000’s 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, rather more than that. She provided non secular help for college kids on the college, held weekly prayer teams for college kids and began a program known as SMILE (College students Transferring Into the Lives of the Aged). This mission 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 mentioned. “That is the best way I’m. I’ve to be myself. I inform college students that — you may see folks that you simply admire, you are able to do a number of the issues they do, however you must be your self. God made you the one that you’re.”
