Notre Dame Mourns Death of Two Swimmers : Aftermath: School has Mass to remember the athletes after bus carrying women’s team crashes.

Notre Dame mourned the deaths of two freshman members of the women’s swim team killed in a bus crash early Friday, remembering their lives at a Mass celebrated by the school’s president.

Killed were Margaret Murphy (Megan) Beeler of nearby Granger and Colleen Hipp of St. Louis, each 19.

“The Notre Dame community today is shocked and sorrowful,” Father Edward A. Malloy told thousands of students and faculty members who filled the Basilica of the Sacred Heart.

Malloy cut short his attendance at an education conference in Washington and returned to campus to say the early evening Mass.

Dennis Brown, a university spokesman, had earlier said: “It’s a tough situation and we are trying to cope with it. Everybody in the Notre Dame family has been affected.” The university canceled all weekend sporting events on campus.

The team’s bus crashed and overturned four miles from the campus during a snowstorm along the Indiana Toll Road, also known as Interstates 80-90. The accident occurred shortly after midnight as the team returned from a meet near Chicago.

“They were both pretty much going to be the stars of the team,” Rose Pietrzak, an assistant sports information director, said of the victims. “Beeler was one of our top athletes. Hipp was one of our top distance athletes.”

A third freshman swimmer, Haley Scott, 18, of Phoenix, suffered a serious back injury and underwent surgery twice Friday.

Most of the 35 others aboard suffered minor injuries and Coach Tim Welsch escaped injury. The bus carried 32 swimmers, three coaches, a student manager and the driver. Sister Josef Riordan, a resident adviser at Walsh Hall, where Beeler lived, said counselors spoke with students at the crash scene and at the infirmary.

“They’re grieving. They’re very close,” she said. “There’s a large class of freshmen at Walsh Hall. So many of them are still in shock.”

The grief extended to the city of South Bend. “It’s a terrible tragedy,” Mayor Joe Kernan said. “The kids were close to home.”

State police said the bus rolled over in the highway’s median strip after hitting a patch of heavy snow.

Indiana State Police were investigating the accident.