Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, the Loyola Chicago team chaplain who rose to fame during the Ramblers’ 2018 Final Four run, died Thursday. She was 106.
Sister Jean, as she was known around the Rogers Park campus and later internationally, became an iconic sports figure as the adored then-98-year-old nun who sat in a wheelchair wearing a gold and maroon scarf draped around her neck as she cheered for the Ramblers while they knocked off team after team as a No. 11 seed en route to the Final Four. Fans of every NCAA Tournament team and celebrity sports figures like Charles Barkley and Bill Walton requested selfies with her, and her media session at the Final Four was so packed that coach Porter Moser joked he thought Tom Brady was conducting an interview.
Although she was new to many college basketball fans, Sister Jean had been a beloved part of the campus community for decades — a fixture at sporting events, a resident in a student dormitory for years, an active campus ministry leader and a friend whose office door in the student center was almost always left open as an invitation for visitors.
Sister Jean began serving as the team chaplain in 1994. She provided the Ramblers with prayer, comfort and scouting reports.
Loyola University Chicago is greatly saddened to confirm the death of Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, BVM. This is a tremendous loss of someone who touched the lives of so many people. We appreciate everyone’s thoughts & prayers during this difficult time. Details to follow. pic.twitter.com/zPiMY1MsIu
— Loyola University Chicago (@LoyolaChicago) October 10, 2025
Her competitive spirit was only second to her religious spirit. Before basketball games, Sister Jean circled the team around her for a pregame prayer in the tunnel, the players looming over her petite 5-foot frame. Games never tipped off before she delivered into a microphone another blessing — often asking the Lord for an injury-free game, to grant the Ramblers a “W” and to watch that the referees called it fair — as Gentile Arena fell silent to join her.
“Sometimes my prayers don’t seem very holy, but they mean a lot to the players,” Sister Jean told The Chicago Tribune for a 2018 article. “I (roam) the concourse during halftime, and opponents’ fans will say, ‘You pray harder for Loyola.’ I say, ‘If you wore gold and maroon, you would too.’”
Moser stated surprise when he started the job and found on his desk an envelope containing a detailed scouting report about his roster. He’d soon grow accustomed to them. After games, she religiously emailed players, complimenting their strengths and sometimes pointing out areas in need of improvement.
When the Ramblers became Cinderellas of the 2018 tournament, players sought her out for a hug as she awaited them courtside after each seemingly miraculous victory to earn the school’s first trip to the Final Four since 1963. Her wheelchair sat among confetti on the court in Atlanta and she wore a Final Four cap. The team cut down a piece of the net for her.
“She’s just a wonderful person,” guard Marques Townes said at the time. “Just to have her around and her presence and her aura, when you see her, it’s just like the world is just great because her spirit and her faith in us and Loyola basketball.”
Born Dolores Bertha Schmidt on Aug. 21, 1919, she was the oldest of three children in a sport-loving family in San Francisco.
She played high school basketball from 1933 to ’37 on a court divided into three sections with antiquated gender rules that allowed only forwards to shoot. “I was a short girl, so I didn’t shoot very much,” she told the Tribune in 2018.
In third grade, inspired by her teacher, Sister Jean felt a calling to become a nun. After high school, she left on a train for Dubuque, Iowa, to join the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary convent as a postulate. She was received by the religious community and took her religious name — Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt — in 1938 before professing her vows in 1945.
She returned to her home state as an elementary school teacher in North Hollywood, even teaching entertainer Bob Hope’s children during her tenure. Around that time, rules changed to allow girls to play half-court basketball, and she was determined to help her students learn the game. She started programs for girls and coached them in softball, volleyball, track, ping-pong and yo-yo and, of course, basketball, according to her Loyola bio. “At noon, during lunch on the playground, I would have the boys play the girls,” she said. “I told them, ‘I know you have to hold back because you play full court, but we need to make our girls strong.’ And they did make them strong.”
In 1961, after receiving a master’s degree at Loyola University in Los Angeles, she filled a teaching position in Chicago at Mundelein College, a former all-women’s school near Loyola, and later served as a dean and in other administrative roles. She attended athletic events at both schools and sometimes drove teams to their competitions. She retired from the education department at Loyola shortly after Mundelein merged with the university in 1991, but a few years later she was asked to become a team chaplain — a position she cherished for decades.
During the 2017-18 basketball season, Sister Jean broke her hip in a fall off a sidewalk curb and missed nine home games. But she was determined to return. And she did for a season many described as miraculous.
When she got wind school administrators might find trips to NCAA Tournament destinations too taxing for her, she shot down that notion and insisted on traveling along for the ride. And what a ride it was.
The Ramblers upset No. 6 seed Miami on a buzzer-beater 3 by Ingram in the first round, then followed up with a one-point victory on a friendly bounce off the rim by Clayton Custer to spoil No. 3 seed Tennessee. The Ramblers eked out another one-point win in the Sweet 16 off a 3 from Townes to down No. 7 seed Nevada before thoroughly thumping No. 9 seed Kansas State to earn a Final Four berth. No wonder many suspected some divine intervention courtesy of Sister Jean was on the Ramblers’ side.
Loyola Chicago’s run finished in a loss to Michigan in the Final Four. But by that time Sister Jean was a household name.
Television cameras trained on her during Loyola Chicago’s games. She later cheekily corrected a reporter who called her a “national celebrity.” “International celebrity,” she said, as she’d been mentioned in newscasts in Mexico and Great Britain. She appeared on Access Hollywood. A bobblehead was made in her likeness. And during the tournament, her handlers sometimes had to find secret entrances just so she’d have time for lunch without a throng of her admirers stopping her for photographs.
But it didn’t bother — nor exhaust — Sister Jean.
“What’s taking a picture?” she told reporters. “That’s not making me tired. It’s making me happy because I’m making others happy.”
Her 100th birthday celebration was attended by local politicians and dozens of well-wishers including former players at a party at campus.
The plucky nun, who was inducted into the school’s athletic hall of fame in 2017, was as determined as ever to follow the Ramblers to the 2021 NCAA Tournament after the 2020 postseason had been nixed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. She had moved into a downtown Chicago senior living facility and would follow Loyola games on live stats websites if she couldn’t find it on her limited television dial. She still kept in touch with the team via emails and called in her prayers to the locker room during the season.
But if they were going to the tournament, so was she, she figured.
“I said, ’I’m not going to run down on the court, and I’m not going to cause any disturbance,’” she told reporters, noting she had pleaded with university administrators, who had limited capacity for travel parties. “I said, ‘I won’t do things I’m not supposed to.’”
Her prayers were answered again. Sister Jean, then 102, watched gleefully in Indianapolis as the Ramblers upset top seed Illinois 71-58 in the second round for a trip to the Sweet 16. After the victory, the players spotted Sister Jean in the stands and waved for a socially distanced celebration with her.
“It was a great moment,” Sister Jean told reporters after the game. “We just held our own the whole time. At the end, to see the scoreboard said the W belonged to Loyola, that whole game was just so thrilling.”
The Ramblers lost to Oregon State in the Sweet 16 the following weekend.
In more recent years as her health declined, she was unable to attend games. She officially retired as team chaplain in September (2025).
While Sister Jean delighted in attending games and being in the spotlight, she saw her notoriety as a way to bring attention to the Jesuit university but mostly as a means to spread a positive message about faith — no matter anyone’s religion or beliefs.
“The legacy I want is that I helped people and I was not afraid to give my time to people and teach them to be positive about what happens and that they can do good for other people,” Sister Jean told the Tribune. “And being willing to take a risk. People might say, ‘Why didn’t I do that?’ Well, just go ahead and try it — as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody.”
