Monday, January 24, 2022, marks the 30th anniversary of the fatal bus crash that killed two members of the Notre Dame women’s swim and dive team. Swimmers Meghan Beeler and Colleen Hipp, both freshmen at the time, died.
The accident occurred in 1992, as the team was returning from a meet against Northwestern. The charter bus hit a patch of ice and skidded off the road, flipping on its side. Several other swimmers were injured. The bus itself, according to Indiana-based news station WNDU, was just over two miles from Notre Dame.
“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about it,″ said head coach Tim Welsh in an AP article five years after the crash. “I don’t spend a lot of time on the, ‘Why did this have to happen?’ I spend more time thinking, ‘What is the reason I’m here on this earth? What am I supposed to do and what is my contribution? And am I doing it? How will I know?’”
Twenty-five years after the accident, Notre Dame senior associate athletics director John Heisler wrote about his role that night, having to confirm for the Associated Press that the women’s swim and dive team was, in fact, the team on the bus.
Heisler wrote about the chaos of that night, as injured students were sent to different hospitals, other Notre Dame teams who returned from traveling that day were notified of the accident, and how it appeared to him that the entire school attended the memorial service for Beeler and Hipp.
“I remember noting in the media guide that Northwestern had defeated Notre Dame 183-117 in the meet that 1992 night in Evanston—and thinking maybe in all the history of sports at Notre Dame there has never been a more inconsequential final score,” Heisler wrote.
One of the more severely injured swimmers was Haley Scott DeMaria, who after the accident faced the threat of waist-down paralysis. Through six surgeries, she learned to walk again and returned to swim for Notre Dame in October 1993, winning her heat in a 50-meter race, according to WNDU.
Heisler wrote that the team established the Beeler-Hipp award for a freshman “who best exemplifies the vitality, competitiveness and love for Notre Dame shown by Meghan Beeler and Colleen Hipp.” DeMaria won that first award, Heisler wrote.
DeMaria would eventually write a book about her recovery, and she has worked as a motivational speaker.
DeMaria credits Beeler and Hipp for her recovery.
“From day one, after the accident, when I first learned that they had passed away it has been, they have been, my inspiration for everything I have done,” DeMaria said to WNDU in 2017. “They were the reason I wanted to walk, they were the reason I wanted swim. At the time, that was what I felt I could do for them.”
You can read the original article about the crash, from Notre Dame’s student paper The Observer, here.
Growing up as a swim kid in Indiana, I will always remember.
Thank you Swimswam. Colleen was my very dear friend. I think of her often and am always moved by the touching remembrances of such a traumatic day. At her funeral it felt like the entire Ozark LSC came to say goodbye. Swimmers in dresses, suits, ties and parkas were lined up around the block. She was as kind, hardworking and generous as anyone possibly could be.