Wake Up With Purpose!, page 16
He was genuinely torn about what he should do. Porter took my advice about the pros and cons list to a higher level. On the flight home from New York, he wrote two letters to Rambler Nation. The first one announced he was leaving, the second announced he was staying. He read each one and discerned how they made him feel. Then he prayed. He decided he felt a lot better about the letter announcing he was staying. So he told Saint John’s no thank you and prepared for another season with the Ramblers.
* * *
The excitement of the Final Four carried our campus through the end of the school year. Even when the students were gathered in study groups for final exams, everyone seemed unusually chipper. I would roll by and ask why they were so happy. “Oh, Sister Jean, the Final Four!” they replied. How silly of me to ask.
As proud as I was of our team for making the Final Four, I was even more proud when I learned that our men’s basketball team had the number one graduation rate in the entire country that season. Now that’s a big W.
* * *
I thought I was making progress with my rehabilitation and looked forward to getting out of that wheelchair once and for all. But I encountered a major setback over the summer when I got shingles. Though it is very uncomfortable on the skin, even worse, it does a lot of damage to your nerves and muscles. I had to work even harder at my rehabilitation to strengthen my leg. That included getting Botox injections every three months to liven up the nerves and restore the muscles. I like to tell people I have the best-looking foot in the world because of all those Botox injections.
Though I was disappointed, in time I had another basketball season to look forward to. Three of our starters from the Final Four team would be returning, and Lucas Williamson was ready to step into his role on the starting five. A big challenge for Porter was to make sure his players didn’t get too full of themselves. You could hardly blame them after they were showered with so much attention and praise. But Porter’s motto for the program was “no excuses, no complaining, no entitlement.” The team may have gone to the Final Four, but Porter made sure that on the first day of school the basketball players were right there to help the freshmen move into their dorms, just like always.
The notion of service is a very important part of our program and our school in general. A few years ago the players started working with Misericordia, a local organization that cares for people with severe disabilities. Every year the team hosts a “Misericordia night,” where the disabled community comes to a game and cheers on the Ramblers. As was the case with SMILE, the idea of this program was to help the folks with disabilities, but Porter and his coaches understood the great benefits the players would enjoy from knowing they were helping other people.
Even though we were going to miss the three seniors who graduated, we were getting a boost from the addition of Aher Uguak, a six-foot-seven sophomore who sat out the previous season after transferring from New Mexico. Aher was born in Egypt after his family had to flee their native South Sudan because of civil war, but when he was eight months old they moved to Canada. I thought he was quite shy when he first came in and not very aggressive on the court, but it didn’t take long for his competitiveness to come out.
Complacency was never a problem with this group. If anything, the team was too intent on living up to the Final Four expectations. It was not fair considering how hard it is for any team, much less one at our level, to make the Final Four even once. At one point Porter had to tell Clayton Custer, who was now a senior, that he was required to smile at him three times during practice. Basketball is supposed to be fun, but sometimes it’s easy to forget that. (It’s easy to forget that about a lot of things, come to think of it.)
And yet, through all of that, our boys played great and won the Missouri Valley Conference regular season championship. Unfortunately, our season ended when we lost, 53–51, to Bradley in the semifinals at Arch Madness. We had beaten Bradley the previous year in the tournament, so I’m pretty sure they were happy about getting their revenge. We ended up playing in the National Invitation Tournament, where we lost in the first round to Creighton, Porter’s alma mater. It was a tough way to end the season, but I’m proud to report that the team posted an overall grade point average of 3.48. At Loyola, our student-athletes take their studies very seriously.
* * *
The summer of 2019 marked yet another significant occasion: my one-hundredth birthday, on August 21. I was honored by Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker, who declared it “Sister Jean Day” across the entire state. (Live a hundred years, you get yourself a day!) The LEGOLAND Discovery Center commissioned a statue of me, this one standing two and a half feet tall and consisting of more than ten thousand LEGO bricks. That summer the school also completed the Alfie Norville Practice Facility. It was a great accomplishment, not to mention a huge boon for recruiting.
One of the new arrivals that year was Marquise Kennedy, a six-foot-one freshman guard from Brother Rice High School in Chicago. One of the reasons Porter recruited him was because on his visit, every time someone held open a door for Marquise, he looked the person in the eye and said thank you. That showed Porter that he was a young man of great character. Once again, we had a solid season, this time finishing second in the conference. We played Valparaiso in our first game at Arch Madness and sprinted out to a fourteen-point lead at halftime. Alas, we fell apart in the second half and ended up losing in overtime, 74–73. Oh, that was a blow! I’ll never forget the look on Porter’s face as he came off the court. He was just devastated, and the team felt the same way.
As it turned out, we were lucky to be able to play the game at all. The coronavirus pandemic had been building since January, and it had gotten so bad that the following week, all the conference tournaments were canceled. Then the NCAA tournament was canceled. It was a very sad and scary time, for us and the entire world.
The pandemic forced colleges around the country to conduct online learning, and all public events, including sports, were shut down through the summer. I felt so sorry for our seniors who would not get a proper graduation ceremony. It was hard on all the parents, too, because a lot of students went home to finish up their school year. Nobody had ever faced anything like this, and we weren’t sure what to do. The hardest part was the way young kids were not able to be with their friends.
Naturally, I was frightened of getting the virus myself, but thankfully the people at The Clare did a great job keeping us isolated and safe. And believe me, I kept plenty busy. I stayed in constant communication with people through email and the phone, checking in on all the programs that I helped to run. That included students I knew at Arrupe College, which is our two-year institution. I also wrote to students in the ACE program, which stands for Achieving College Excellence. I knew they were going through their own challenges because of the pandemic, and I wanted to make them feel at home. I find that when we are sad, helping other people overcome their own sadness makes us feel a lot better.
I know that many people, especially older people, experienced depression during that time, but I did not. Sure, I was frustrated, and I worried about what was going on all over the world with this terrible virus. But I’ve never been depressed. I am lucky that I came from a happy home. I’ve had a happy life. I enjoy what I do. There’s nothing for me to be depressed about.
During the pandemic, I put a big priority on staying in touch with the Ramblers. I emailed the team frequently and called the players to check in. Someone came in and taught me how to do a Zoom call on my iPad. As busy as I was, I always set aside some time at three thirty every afternoon to watch Jeopardy. That was my daily reward.
The online learning continued throughout the summer and into the school year. College sports was able to resume in the fall, but the players were under strict guidelines to stay isolated, and they were tested frequently. What a sacrifice they made! No fans were allowed at the games, but I watched them on television, and when they weren’t on TV I followed the action on my iPad. I couldn’t do the pregame prayers in person, so I delivered them over a speakerphone, and I continued to send my scouting reports. It turned out to be another memorable season. We rolled through the Missouri Valley Conference again, and by the middle of February we were back in the national rankings.
We had been neck and neck with Drake all season, so it was fitting that we played them in the championship game of Arch Madness. All the “bracketologists” were saying that even if we lost that game we would still be in the NCAA tournament, but our boys wanted to remove all doubt. I delivered my usual pregame prayer over speakerphone, and then they beat Drake, 75–65, to capture another conference tournament title. As soon as our game was over, one of the TV announcers predicted that our team was capable of making another run to the Final Four. He added, “I’ve got four words for you, America: Get Sister Jean vaccinated!”
He was referring to the COVID-19 vaccine, which had come out in December and was slowly working its way to the public. I thought it was a miracle and a godsend. Since I am, shall we say, of an advanced age, I was among the first to get the vaccine when it became available in February. By the time the NCAA tournament rolled around I was all set. Instead of being held at various sites around the country, the tournament was held in a “bubble” in Indianapolis. A small number of fans and family would be allowed to attend. There was no way I was going to let my Ramblers take the court without my being there.
Because of all the restrictions, I could not be around the team, so I had to continue to deliver my pregame messages via speakerphone. I sat in the upper level wearing my Loyola mask as we won our first-round game against Georgia Tech. That set up a matchup against Illinois. The game was huge for many reasons. The first was that the winner got to go to the Sweet Sixteen. Illinois was also a No. 1 seed, so they were the heavy favorite. And of course, they were our in-state rivals. We rarely played Illinois during the regular season—maybe they’re afraid to play us?—so this was our chance to show we could beat our big brothers.
I spent extra time scouting Illinois beforehand. I wanted to have the best possible information for the team for the prayer. “As we play the Fighting Illini, we ask for special help to overcome this team and get a great win,” I told them. “We hope to score early and make our opponents nervous. We have a great opportunity to convert rebounds as this team makes about 50 percent of layups and 30 percent of its three-point shots. Our defense can take care of that.”
Wouldn’t you know, that is exactly what happened. Illinois only made 45 percent of its shots and shot 29 percent from three-point land, and we pulled out the 71-58 win. It may have been technically an upset, but by then people had learned to stop thinking of Loyola as Cinderella. My favorite part of the day was when Cameron Krutwig, who by that time had become one of the best players in Loyola history, was doing an interview with the broadcast network after the game while wearing a headset. He was midsentence when the rest of the players ran over to him and started hugging and dancing together. The announcers were happy to have their interview interrupted. After all those kids had been through, they deserved to celebrate any way they wanted.
For our Sweet Sixteen game against Oregon State, we were in the unusual position of favorite. We were a No. 8 seed, but they were a No. 12 seed, which is even lower than we were when we made the Final Four two years before. Sure enough, the underdog won again, and our season was over.
When we got back to Chicago, Porter let me know he was considering another offer, this one from the University of Oklahoma. I could tell right away that he was considering it very seriously. Oklahoma is a prominent state school, and Porter sounded as though he was excited about the chance to do great things there. This time he accepted the job. A few days later, Loyola promoted his top assistant, Drew Valentine, to the head coaching spot.
Drew was only twenty-nine years old, making him the youngest coach in the country. Some people didn’t like that we were hiring someone so young, much less someone who had never been a head coach before. They wanted us to go out and get a “big name” coach. But on our campus, the big name is Loyola. I had no doubt that Drew was 100 percent prepared for the job.
I wanted to give Porter a proper going-away present. When he was settled into his new office at Oklahoma, he received a package from me containing a book I had put together of all the emails, prayers, and messages I had written to him during his last season at Loyola. Porter’s coaching at LU had the longest tenure that any head coach had enjoyed since George Ireland retired in 1975. Porter called me to say thanks for the gift. I again wished him all the best in his new job and thanked him for leaving the program in such good hands. That’s the thing about life and basketball. They’re both full of wins and losses, hellos and goodbyes. Porter had done wonderful work during his time at Loyola. Now it was time for the program to start a new chapter.
Sixteen
That Old Community Spirit
We can put on whatever costume we want, but God sees who we really are on the inside.
A journalism major at Loyola once said she wanted to interview me about all the changes I’ve seen over the years. I asked her how long she needed, and she said fifteen minutes. “Fifteen minutes?” I replied. “If I give you one minute for every year of my life, we would miss dinner.”
I’m sure it’s hard for young people today to imagine a time when the only place to get the news was through newspapers. When I was growing up in San Francisco, we had a morning paper and an evening paper, and when something exciting happened they would print an “extra.” The young paperboy would be walking down the street yelling, “Extra! Extra!” just like you see in the movies. My dad would give us two pennies so we could buy one.
Our student newspaper is called the Loyola Phoenix. The students who work there are really special. I’m telling you, they could be investigators on any news channel. Don’t let anyone tell you that young people today don’t want to work. Those student reporters are diggers. They know how to get the job done.
I am very intentional about staying on top of the news. I am a regular watcher of ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir. I don’t like it as much when they have a substitute anchor, but I understand he needs a break once in a while. On Sunday I watch George Stephanopoulos. I used to be an avid reader of the Chicago newspapers, but they’ve taken a hit economically the last few years. I read parts of the New York Times on my computer every morning, and I have other news sources I access on my iPad.
I understand it’s very hard today to convey the news properly and fairly. It falls to all of us to make an extra effort to ensure that what we are reading is true. Older folks like me are especially susceptible to being fooled because we are typically not comfortable using technology. And it’s not just the news that’s a challenge. I must get five calls a day from people asking for money. I don’t even know how they get my number. Usually I don’t even answer the phone, but I don’t know how many people my age understand that and end up getting scammed.
I believe this is why so many people didn’t want to get the COVID vaccine—there was so much conflicting and false information. I thought that was unfortunate, not to mention dangerous. There is also misinformation with respect to climate change. Although evidence suggests it is a serious problem, many don’t believe it’s happening. Our planet is one of God’s most beautiful gifts to humanity, and I pray that we will do a much better job taking care of it. With all the contradictory information out there, it is wise for us to pay attention to what’s actually true.
* * *
The 2021–2022 basketball season marked a new chapter in Loyola basketball history, but it also featured a look back to a vital part of our past. That light came in the form of a documentary about our 1963 championship team. It was important for people to learn this history, not just because of how great that team was, but because of the racial barriers those players helped to dismantle. This was especially important in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020, which was one of the most tragic things I had ever witnessed. That incident set off a wave of Black Lives Matter protests, which reminded me very much of the protest movements of the sixties.
We had showings of the documentary on campus, and all the living members of that team did interviews and took part in panel discussions. My favorite part of the documentary was that Lucas Williamson narrated it. He did a marvelous job, as did the producers.
Sports has always been one of the best places for social progress to be made. It’s a simple formula: if you want to win the game, you have to put your best players out there, regardless of their race. That’s why I love athletes so much. If they have differences, they’re going to say it to one another and talk it through, even if that means arguing about it. It’s okay to argue with your teammates, just like we argue with our families. The important thing is to keep your eye on the main goal—to win.
Little kids understand this best of all. Many of you may have seen the video that went viral of the little Black boy and the little white boy running toward each other and hugging. (See, Mariah? I know what “viral” means now.) They had no idea they were looking at someone who was different—because they weren’t. I thought what was interesting about that video was not just the actions of those darling little boys but how so many who saw the video then shared it with their friends. It speaks to the deep yearning we have to connect with our fellow human. This is what God wishes for us, but He can only do so much.
It’s incredible to think that not that long ago there were parts of this country that thought it should be illegal for white people to play a basketball game against Black people. I’m glad we’ve come so far, but I also understand that in many areas of our society we still have a long way to go. I’d like to think that learning about our past can help people—especially young people—find a path forward where everyone is treated equally.
