A 'Renaissance Woman' On and Off the Field
When Loyola junior Nora Schober made her college softball debut in spring 2003, she expected the game to be a memorable event. Little did she know just how memorable.
Nora Schober
As she dove to catch the second ball hit to her, she broke her arm. Not even one game into being a Rambler, she was out for the season. She underwent reconstructive surgery and months of therapy.
Schober, a Palos Park, IL, native who’s played softball since the age of 6, says she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to return to the field.“But my therapist said the harder I worked, the better chance I had of making a full recovery. That drove me,” she says. It worked. Schober finished rehab in the fall of 2004 and was able to play that year. She continued to prove herself—in a big way—in the 2005 and 2006 seasons. Today, she’s a Second Team All-Horizon League Player, consistently coming through in a clutch with gamewinning hits.
Schober wound up one shy of the Loyola singleseason RBI record, finishing with 43. In the Horizon League Championship tournament, she hit two home runs and three doubles and established a new tournament record with 10 RBIs.
Schober, a marketing major interning at a Chicago PR firm this summer, is a leader and role model on and off the field, says head coach Yvette Healy.“The athletes who have the most talent don’t always make the best leaders,” Healy says. “But Nora has it all. She’s competitive, but she takes academics seriously. She wants to excel across the board.We call her a Renaissance woman.”
Schober gives credit to “the great coaching staff” and her team, which is “growing and improving every day.” She says her goal is to help the Ramblers win the Horizon tournament next year and become the first Loyola softball team to advance to the NCAA tournament.
JENNY KUSTRA-QUINN