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.
“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.”
The statue stands 2 1/2 feet tall and took more than 30 hours to build, WGN-TV reported.
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.