Sports
Sister Jean, beloved Loyola-Chicago chaplain, dies
Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, the beloved, longtime chaplain of the Loyola-Chicago men’s basketball team who became a folk hero during its Cinderella run to the Final Four in 2018, died Thursday, the school said.
She was 106.
“In many roles at Loyola over the course of more than 60 years, Sister Jean was an invaluable source of wisdom and grace for generations of students, faculty, and staff,” Loyola president Mark C. Reed said. “While we feel grief and a sense of loss, there is great joy in her legacy. Her presence was a profound blessing for our entire community, and her spirit abides in thousands of lives. In her honor, we can aspire to share with others the love and compassion Sister Jean shared with us.”
Sister Jean — born Dolores Bertha Schmidt on Aug. 21, 1919, then taking the name Sister Jean Dolores in 1937 — joined the staff at Loyola-Chicago in 1991. Three years later, she became part of the basketball team, first as an academic adviser before transitioning to chaplain. Health issues caused her to step down from her role in August.
She was the Ramblers’ No. 1 fan, and that was on display during the 2018 NCAA tournament when, as the No. 11 seeds, they went on an improbable run to the Final Four, ultimately losing to Michigan. Sister Jean, 98 at the time, was with them every step of the way, praying for the team — and its opponents — before each game and encouraging the Ramblers to play hard, play together and play smart.
And if they lost? She told them regularly not to sweat it; it just wasn’t meant to be.
“She’s an incredible person,” star Loyola-Chicago guard Clayton Custer said at the time.
Fans throughout college basketball, and beyond, agreed.
She became an international celebrity during the Ramblers’ run. Sister Jean bobbleheads and athletic apparel sold fast. She was the subject of countless national TV interviews. And there were even news conferences for her ahead of games. During the loss to Michigan at the Alamodome in San Antonio, T-shirts read “Win One for the Nun!” and a sign in the crowd encouraged the Wolverines to give obedience to “Jean’s Plan.”
Her fame didn’t wane in the years to come.
When she turned 100, Loyola-Chicago announced a scholarship fund and endowment in her honor to support students, and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker proclaimed Aug. 21, 2019, “Sister Jean Day” across the state. When she turned 103, the Chicago train station plaza at the Loyola campus was renamed in her honor, with a large sign that read “Home of the World Famous Sister Jean!” to greet visitors there. And when she turned 105, she received a proclamation from President Joe Biden — who sent her flowers on at least one previous occasion.
Biden’s message, in part, told Sister Jean: “You have shown us all that yours is a life well lived.”
She remained close to the team, as well.
When Loyola-Chicago qualified for the NCAA tournament in 2021, a vaccinated Sister Jean was cleared to travel to Indianapolis, and before the Ramblers’ second-round game against top-seeded Illinois, she gave them a prayer and a scouting report.
“We have a great opportunity to convert rebounds as this team makes about 50% of layups and 30% of its 3 [pointers]. Our defense can take care of that,” she told the team.
It worked, as Loyola-Chicago upset the Illini to reach the Sweet 16.
“She still sends me an email after every single game,” former Loyola-Chicago coach Porter Moser once said. “There is no human like her.”
Born in San Francisco in 1919, Sister Jean grew up in a devoutly Catholic family. Her religious calling, she said, came at the age of 8. She was in third grade when she met a kind, joyful teacher who belonged to the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Brimming with admiration, she would pray every day: “Dear God, help me understand what I should do, but please tell me I should become a BVM sister,” she recounted in her 2023 memoir.
“I guess God listened to me on that one,” she wrote.
She followed her calling to the order’s motherhouse in Dubuque, Iowa, where she made her vows. She went on to teach at Catholic schools in Chicago and Southern California, where she also coached girls’ basketball, before she ended at Mundelein College — on the Chicago lakefront — in the 1960s. The school became affiliated with Loyola in 1991, and Sister Jean was hired to help students with the transition.
In 1994, she was asked to help student basketball players boost their grades — “the booster shooter” she called herself — and later that year, she was named chaplain of the men’s team. The role, she wrote in her memoir, became “the most transformational and transcendent position” of her life.
“Sports are very important because they help develop life skills,” she said. “And during those life skills, you’re also talking about faith and purpose.”
The university said Sister Jean is survived by her sister-in-law, Jeanne Tidwell, and her niece, Jan Schmidt.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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Tuesday’s Supreme Court hearing on trans athletes in women’s sports inspired confidence that the majority of justices will side with the legal defense to “Save Women’s Sports” and uphold state bans against biological males in those sports.
But some activists are far from satisfied with how the hearing was conducted.
Multiple female athletes connected to the case and others who rallied outside the court in support of the cultural movement told Fox News Digital their reactions to the hearing, the arguments and the justices’ questions.
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Reactions to the hearing among those women ranged from hopeful optimism for a landmark ruling to jaded disappointment due to the stances and word choice of the justices:
The Defendants
Female athletes party to the case speak outside the U.S. Supreme Court after justices heard arguments in challenges to state bans on transgender athletes in women’s sports on January 13, 2026, in Washington, D.C. The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 13 wades into the hot-button issue of transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports. (Oliver Contreras / AFP)
Madison Kenyan
Kenyan, a former Idaho State women’s cross-country and track runner, is a voluntary defendant in the Little v. Hecox case, which she decided to join after having to compete against a trans athlete her freshman year in 2019.
“It filled me with excitement and hope for future generations. There should never be a question about states’ rights to protect women’s athletics. I’m glad to see so many people stand up and support something as simple and true as that.”
Mary Kate Marshall
Marshall was Kenyan’s teammate at Idaho State and had to experience competing against the trans athlete with Kenyan, and then joined the case alongside her teammate.
“It is always sad to see the people who have been deceived by the lie that men can become women. No amount of hormones can do that. I remain hopeful that more people will see biological reality for what it is: true and unchanging.”
Lainey Armistead
Armistead, a former team captain for the West Virginia State University women’s soccer team, intervened in defense of West Virginia’s sports law in B.P.J. v. West Virginia case.
“It has been a long journey to make it to the Supreme Court, so it was incredibly meaningful to me to see the argument in person. It was an awesome experience, and I’m really hopeful that the court will protect women’s sports.”
The Protesters
Brooke Slusser
Former San Jose State University women’s volleyball star Brooke Slusser with her parents, Paul and Kim Slusser. (Courtesy of Kim Slusser)
Slusser, a former women’s volleyball co-captain at San Jose State University, sued the NCAA, Mountain West Conference and representatives of her school after discovering a teammate she roomed with and changed with was a biological male in 2024. Her story garnered immense media attention during an election-season news cycle and has prompted a federal investigation into the school.
“It was definitely surreal,” Slusser said of Tuesday’s event, and she is eagerly awaiting resolution on the case, adding that “the unknowing of what’s going to happen next and not getting an answer yet,” is hard for her.
Stephanie Turner
Stephanie Turner, a U.S. fencer who refused to compete against a transgender athlete in high school, speaks outside the U.S. Supreme Court as justices hear arguments in challenges to state bans on transgender athletes in women’s sports on January 13, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Oliver Contreras / AFP)
Turner, a competitive women’s fencer, became an overnight sensation in the “Save Women’s Sports” movement when footage went viral of her kneeling to protest a trans opponent at a competition last spring. She was disqualified by USA Fencing for refusing to face the opponent and hasn’t competed in USA Fencing since.
“Let me say I was a little disappointed that not that there weren’t any very strong stances from the Supreme Court justices on language, and that they were capitulating to new age terms like cisgender.”
Payton McNabb
Payton McNabb was severely injured after being struck in the head and neck by a spike from a transgender-identifying male on the opposing volleyball team. (Courtesy of IW Features and Payton McNabb)
McNabb suffered permanent brain damage when she was spiked in the head with a volleyball by a trans athlete during a North Carolina high school match in 2022. McNabb has since become one of the leading activists in the movement and was honored by President Donald Trump’s 2025 joint address to congress.
“There was a time not that long ago when many women were afraid to speak up about this issue. Now, to see it taken seriously at the highest level and to see people no longer afraid to stand up for women and girls was incredibly powerful. It reminded me how far this movement has come and why continuing to speak out matters so much.
“The hardest part was realizing that we have sitting Supreme Court justices who cannot define what a woman is. To me, that strips away credibility. How can someone serve on the highest court in the country and not understand basic biological reality? The fact that defining ‘woman’ has even reached the Supreme Court, and that we don’t know how it will turn out, is astonishing and pathetic.”
Kaitlynn Wheeler
Wheeler is a former University of Kentucky swimmer who had to face transgender UPenn swimmer Lia Thomas in the 2022 NCAA championships.
“What hit me the hardest was how little anyone talked about the girls impacted. During the oral arguments, it was nonstop about men and boys, their feelings, their experiences, their access and the girls who Title IX was literally written for were basically an afterthought. And that’s sick to me.
“Then there is this push to reduce women down to a circulating testosterone threshold, like that’s all we are. As if womanhood can be boiled down to a lab result. That’s insulting. Women are not a hormone level. We are complex. We are different, and we deserve protections because of that not in spite of it.”
Macy Petty
Petty, a former women’s volleyball player at Lee University who had to face a transgender opponent during her college career, is now a legislative strategist for the Concerned Women of America.
“Yesterday’s events proved that the movement to protect and promote opportunities for women in sports isn’t just a flash reaction to insanity, we’ve cemented ourselves as a legacy. One of my biggest takeaways was seeing the history we’ve built, and continue to build.
“Some of the involved athletes have been in this for nearly a decade, and many of the thought leaders even long before that. Yet still, the coalition continues to grow and new athletes are standing up daily.”
Sophia Lorey
Lorey, a former women’s soccer player at Vaguard University, is currently the outreach director for the California Family Council and has been on the front lines of bringing awareness to the issue of trans athletes in girls’ sports in California – the nation’s biggest hotbed of incidents.
“I was disappointed that the hearing so often centered on the desires of males rather than the rights and safety of women and girls, the very people this debate is supposed to protect. Justice Alito stood out by grounding the discussion in reality, asking the most basic question: what is a man and what is a woman?
“When the ACLU attorney admitted she could not even define what a man or a woman is, it exposed how detached from reality this entire argument has become. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s reference to sex being ‘assigned at birth’ was especially concerning.
“While some justices appeared willing to concede women’s rights through language and abstraction, such as when Justice Amy Coney Barrett adopted terms like ‘trans girls’, I believe science, Title IX, and the Constitution are on the side of women and girls, and that truth will ultimately prevail.”
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Kaylie Ray
Ray is a former women’s volleyball player at Utah State, and was part of the team that forfeited to San Jose State in 2024 to avoid facing Slusser’s transgender teammate.
“I think it’s unfortunate that some of the liberal-leaning justices were very ideological in their questioning, almost as if they are looking for rationalizations and justifications for allowing this injustice to continue. I don’t feel this should be a left or right issue, this is a women’s issue.
“And the truth is simple: men do not belong in women’s sports or spaces. It’s also disheartening to know that we have a sitting justice who doesn’t know or could not define what a woman is. Still, I am hopeful though that the court will rule in favor of upholding the bans.”
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