Although the #3 ranked Ohio State Women’s Basketball team lost in an upset a few days ago, one former player — 2011 Ohio State graduate Sarah Schulze, who helped lead the Buckeyes to three Big Ten titles — still loves playing ball when she can. Her “uniform” just looks a little different these days.
Now Sister M. Xavier Schulze, a middle and high school teacher and campus minister at St. Cecilia Catholic Middle and High School in Hastings, Nebraska, she values and lives daily the lessons learned on the court.
The 6'1" rural Ohio native entered the Sisters of St. Francis of the Martyr St. George in August 2013 in Alton, Illinois. She made her perpetual profession August 2, 2022.
Sister Xavier’s story was featured in a December 10, 2025, piece by Todd Jones for The Ohio State Alumni Magazine. In that article, Jones wrote, “She wears black and gray, but she bleeds scarlet and gray.” He quoted Sister, “Ohio State is where I fell in love with Jesus.”
She admitted in the article that, as a teen, playing sports was her life, as she aimed to excel in basketball, cross country, and track. But prayer and sacramental habits, starting her college freshman year, set the stage for openness to where she’s putting her talents at God’s service today.
Sports laid the foundation for virtue
With a reflection that surely Pope Leo would appreciate, Sister Xavier told Aleteia that “I actually think sports laid the foundation in my life for a virtuous adulthood.”
Sister Xavier recognized “countless virtues” she relies on today learned through sports -- tenacity and striving for excellence being among the most important.
“Giving up has never been an option for me and it continues to be the same in my striving for sainthood,” she said. In regard to excellence, she compared it to finding joy “in perfecting even simple basketball tricks you would never use on the court."
There is just something beautiful about anything done excellently and my many hours of repetitive practice carries over into my work and community life. Even simple things such as dishes or setting a table well, it is easy for me to be attentive to details because I have practiced details in sports my whole life.
She also believes basketball helped prepare her for community life, learning “not only how to lead, but also to follow and work alongside” teammates. Crediting good coaches, Sister Xavier added that a team setting blesses “with a chance to learn how to be great contributors to a group,” something she says doesn’t happen when the "individual betterment is focused on, over the good of the whole."
Foundations in faith
“I often encounter surprise when I tell people I fell in love with Jesus at a secular school,” the sister commented. She said she thinks that surprise springs from a common experience, where faith is lost in the setting of a secular university.
But for Sister Xavier, “I don’t think it matters necessarily where we go as much as it matters what type of foundation we have."
“I was solidly grounded in the knowledge that there is a truth and that truth is a person who had a plan for me; that plan expressing God’s will most fundamentally through his Church.” Her foundation in those truths brought the difficulties of a secular college to lead her to Jesus and not away from him, although she admitted, “If I had not been grounded in these, I might have very well have lost my faith at college, too.”
Sister Xavier acknowledged the role her rural upbringing played, developing a view of the world “from a point of view of God’s grandeur.” Her parents, Jill and Mark Schulze, raised their three children on a 28-acre farm in west-central Ohio.
Also recalling personal experiences in the Rocky Mountains, particularly at Mass celebrated out-of-doors, she expressed being “blown away that the God who created these marvelous mountains would humble Himself to transform a piece of ordinary bread into himself” -- all so that he could come to her.
“I think this can easily be lost if one limits their experience to concrete walls in a city.” When proximity or schedules don’t permit frequent encounters with “the majesty present in nature,” day trips or even nature walks in local parks help one “be in awe of the humility of our God," the nun reflected.
We live in a country with incredible physical beauty that is available to most persons not too far from their own city.
A story with Jesus, discovered through prayer
Sister Xavier isn’t shy about sharing the difficulty of giving up her dream of professional basketball and the possibility of a biological family, “but I knew that my heart was made too big for just a nuclear family.”
“Each woman is called to bring life in this world. Naturally, we are attracted to physical motherhood.” That said, she admitted that several times as she was around small children, she felt “an inner expansiveness” calling her “to be mother to the whole world,” to each person she would encounter.
I cannot explain it very well with words, but there was an inner recognition that I was to live out my motherhood in a much more far-reaching way than to a few children of my own.
“I always look at vocational discernment as an individual love story with Jesus. We don’t make up our vocation, nor do we have to find it outside of us. The call comes from within," she explained. "We hear his still small voice speaking to us in our hearts and in the deepest desires of our heart.”
Quoting Jesus’ call to “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect," and St. Paul in 1 Thessalonians to “pray without ceasing,” Sister Xavier clarified that while “all are called to love as Jesus” and “lay down our lives for each other … this holiness will be manifested differently depending on one’s own vocation.”
When prayer is our relationship with God, we cannot help but long for more time to pray. So many get stuck in the initial stages of prayer simply because they do not pray. When we pray, and I mean habitually pray each day for a substantial amount of time, we can’t help but want to pray more.
She pointed out the example of her high school students, many of whom have fallen in love with a weekly Holy Hour “because of the silence and peace they find before Our Lord. When we realize that prayer transforms us, heals us and sets us free, it does not remain a checklist obligation.”
