By Thea Jarvis

Lisa Mancuso, an 18-year-old freshman at Notre Dame University and a parishioner of Holy Cross Church in Atlanta, was among those injured in the Jan. 24 bus accident involving the university’s women’s swim team.

A graduate of Dunwoody High School and an Academic All American who swam with the Dynamo Swim Club, Miss Mancuso is on a swimming scholarship in Notre Dame. She suffered rib and leg injuries.

Her leg was trapped under wreckage of the bus for half an hour, she said, and she spent 20 minutes waiting in the snow for help to arrive once freed. She and her injured teammates are recuperating at the student health center on the Notre Dame campus.

“We’re happy to be alive,” Miss Mancuso said in a telephone interview Jan. 27 from the South Bend health center. The funeral Mass was offered for her teammates Margaret Beeler and Colleen Hipp in Sacred Heart Basilica earlier in the day and she, along with other injured swim team members, was able to attend, seated in wheelchair.

“It’s been hard,” she said, noting the magnitude of the loss and the extensive injuries suffered by teammates. She said her ankle looked “like a balloon” and her knee was tender. Cuts over her eye required no stitches, but doctors were checking a rib for possible fracture.

Miss Mancuso said she expected to be released from the university’s health facility this week.

Miss Mancuso explained that the swim season was over at the end of February and she hopes the team, most of whom are on scholarship like herself, can be positive about the future.

“We’ll be back next year,” she said, her voice steady and hopeful. “We’re really optimistic.”