At 98, Sister Jean has Loyola-Chicago on a wing and a few NCAA prayers

When Sister Jean Dolores-Schmidt sat down to fill out her NCAA tournament bracket earlier this week, she knew she was going to pick Loyola University Chicago to win at least a game or two. The Ramblers are her school, after all. But Sister Jean is a basketball lifer, having been around the sport since she played at St. Paul High School in San Francisco from 1933 to 1937, and having spent the past 24 years serving as Loyola’s team chaplain. So while she filled out a “Cinderella” bracket - one that had the Ramblers winning the national championship - her “real” bracket had things going a bit differently. “I have us going to the Sweet 16,” she said Friday in a phone interview with The Washington Post. “It could happen.” Asked how she could have her beloved Ramblers, the No. 11 seed in the South Region, losing in the Sweet 16 to second-seeded Cincinnati, she had an immediate response. “Do you want us to go farther than that?” she asked. Meet Sister Jean, 98, one of the stories of the tournament’s first weekend in the wake of Loyola’s heart-stopping 64-62 victory over sixth-seeded Miami on Thursday in Dallas. Sister Jean has been in a wheelchair since she injured her hip after a fall in November, but she was able to make the trip to Dallas for Thursday’s game and will be with the team for Saturday’s game against third-seeded Tennessee. Just as she has at every home game she’s attended, she’ll lead the team in prayer before the game - always beginning with “Good and gracious God” - and cheer them on while wearing her maroon and yellow scarf. She will also give Loyola Coach Porter Moser and his players a thorough scouting report on the Volunteers, a ritual she goes through before every Ramblers game. “It is very important that I be a part of that, because I reinforce what Porter said,” Sister Jean said. She insisted, however, that they don’t discuss things ahead of time. “We don’t compare notes,” she said. “I have to do my thing, and he has to do his thing.” Sister Jean said she hadn’t had a chance to study Tennessee in detail yet, but did get a chance to watch the Volunteers during their win over Wright State. “We watched part of the game yesterday when they played, and so I could see they are very big,” she said. “They use their height, they use their bodies. So our fellas have to realize that everybody on their team is very good, and does their very best. It isn’t just that one fella gets all the points, or two fellas.”