TCU basketball to honor the late Ed Schollmaier as it opens the season Thursday
Jamie Dixon loved talking basketball with the late Ed Schollmaier. The two had a shared passion for the sport.
Dixon is one of the game’s most respected college coaches, while Schollmaier spent part of his fortune to help renovate the TCU basketball arena that is named after him and his wife Rae.
“We had a real common love of the game and for the same reasons,” Dixon said. “He loved the teamwork of it. He loved the unselfishness. What’s so unique about basketball and different than football and baseball and other sports, you have five guys that have to — you’re not positioned one-on-one like baseball with a batter and pitcher — it’s five guys who have to play together.
“The unselfishness. The teamwork. The camaraderie. That’s needed when you’re on the floor. That’s why he was drawn to the game more so than other sports and I think the same thing to me.”
Schollmaier became a fixture at TCU basketball games over the years, sitting courtside. As TCU opens its season against McNeese State on Thursday night, the school and team will honor and celebrate his life before the game with the team wearing “ES” jersey patches throughout home games this season.
The women’s team is wearing the same “ES” patches for home games. The TCU women opened its season with a 78-48 victory over Houston Baptist on Tuesday night.
TCU athletic director Jeremiah Donati believes Schollmaier would be “very happy” with the way the school is honoring and celebrating him. But his absence will be felt by many in attendance.
“It is hard to imagine looking across the court (tonight) and not seeing Ed,” Donati said. “That will be a sad moment I’m not looking forward to. He has been a fixture at our home games for decades and our biggest supporter quite frankly. It will take a while to get used to not having him here cheering on our teams.”
Schollmaier died on Sept. 16 at age 87.
Schollmaier, the former CEO of Alcon Laboratories, Inc., is best known for being the lead donor of TCU’s $72 million renovation to its basketball arena in 2015 which is now called Ed and Rae Schollmaier Arena.
Schollmaier grew up in Cincinnati and earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Cincinnati. He received his MBA from Harvard. Fort Worth became his home when he moved here to take a promotion with Alcon. That’s when he grew an affinity for TCU and the city. He served on TCU’s board of trustees from 1996 until his passing.
Schollmaier has been recognized as an honorary alumnus and an honorary letterman by TCU. He and Rae also were honored with TCU’s Horizon Award and the Royal Purple Award.
“He’s one of the first people I met when I got back here,” Dixon said. “He’s meant an enormous amount to me personally. Then as I learned about his impact on the community, the type of leader he was — for a person who doesn’t go to TCU and came to Fort Worth as a transplant, he was an impactful man.
“The leadership, the personality, the character of the man. It’s great that we can adopt a person at a school or university, or really he adopts you, and the impact is immense.”
This story was originally published November 11, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
