Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, the beloved team chaplain for the Loyola-Chicago men's basketball team that made a surprising run to the Final Four in 2018, turned 100 Wednesday.
Sister Jean already has been immortalized with a bobblehead doll through the Bobblehead Hall of Fame and has plenty of Loyola merchandise, including T-shirts, containing her likeness. Tuesday, Sister Jean received a look-alike Lego statue made of more than 10,000 plastic bricks, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
The statue stands 2 1/2 feet tall and took more than 30 hours to build, WGN-TV reported.
“We wanted to create something memorable for Sister Jean,” Greg Nuse, a master model builder at Legoland Discovery Center, said in a statement. “We studied Sister Jean meticulously in order to create this look-a-like, complete with Loyola colors, striped scarf and glasses.”
That attention to detail also includes the nun's custom Nike footwear, which has "Sister" behind her left heel and "Jean" behind the right heel, the Sun-Times reported.
The statue can be viewed in Chicago's Legoland Discovery Center until the end of October, the newspaper reported. It will then be moved to a permanent spot at the Gentile Arena, home of Loyola's men's and women's basketball teams and volleyball teams.
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