Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt now has a little bling to go along with the international attention she gained as the near-centenarian team chaplain during Loyola of Chicago's run to the NCAA Final Four.
Loyola great Jerry Harkness, who was a member of its 1963 championship team, presented a Final Four ring Tuesday night to Schmidt before the Ramblers' rematch of their NCAA Tournament game against Nevada.
Schmidt, who turned 99 in August, sat in a wheelchair courtside for the presentation. She joked afterward that she felt as if the ring added five pounds to her weight.
The Catholic nun became a celebrity in March for her fandom and for praying before each game for her Ramblers -- and for their opponents.
Faking his death
The moment of silence was gripping as players across the Irish amateur league, wearing black armbands, stood thinking about Fernando LaFuente, and the crash that his Irish soccer team said killed him.
There was just one weird thing: Fernando LaFuente is very much alive.
No one was more surprised than LaFuente to learn that Ballybrack, the Dublin-based Leinster Senior League team, had gotten Saturday's game against Arklow Town postponed because of what it said was LaFuente's death in a motorcycle crash that occurred on his way home from practice. LaFuente, who had returned home to Spain for a bit, explained that he knew something was up because his name had been removed from the team's roster. He wasn't expecting this, though.
"I thought it would be me breaking a leg," he said. "I was yesterday at home ... playing some video games. I got a call from work and I was like, 'Oh, what's happened?' They told me, 'You're a celebrity,' and I was like, 'Why is that?' They started sending me all these news articles.
"That's how I found out that I was dead."
There were messages of condolence and everything you'd expect in such a horrific moment. As appalling as the ploy was, LaFuente has managed to find some humor in being alive.
"It's serious on their part, but I'm finding it a little bit funny because, basically, I'm not dead and no one has actually been harmed," he said.
Ballybrack may not find it so amusing. The Leinster Senior League plans to meet soon to determine what punishment is warranted.
"We get calls from clubs saying that somebody connected to the club has died and they need a game called off all the time, and there is never any hassle about it," Leinster Senior League chairman David Moran told The Irish Times. "But things started to unravel here when we followed up on Monday to see if we could get in touch with the lad's family and see if there was anything we could do. They said the body was already back in Spain, which didn't really add up."
Moran admitted that the whole experience was shocking.
"We had a minute's silence at all the other games and the players wore black armbands," he said. "You have to have something wrong with you to do something like that."
Sports quiz
Florida has had four quarterbacks selected as the MVP of the SEC Championship Game. Name them.
Sports answer
Terry Dean (1993), Danny Wuerffel (1995, 1996), Rex Grossman (2000), Tim Tebow (2008)
Sports on 11/29/2018