When Haley’s life was uprooted in the early hours of January 24, 1992, she was able to fall back on the foundation of love and support from her family, a constant in her upbringing in Phoenix, Ariz.

The Notre Dame swim team bus crash that killed two of her teammates, Meghan Beeler and Colleen Hipp, had left Haley partially paralyzed. Her parents, Stephen Sr. and Charlotte, and her siblings, Stephen and Mary Frances, along with the Notre Dame community, rallied around her during a long, arduous recovery.

“Little did I know when I started swimming competitively at age 10, that I was starting down a road that would alter my life completely,” Haley recalls. She swam for a USA Swimming club team, in high school at Xavier College Preparatory, and finally for the University of Notre Dame.

“With the exception of my family, there is nothing I am more proud of in life than having been a Notre Dame athlete,” Haley says. “I still get chills when I hear the fight song; I still cry when I sing the alma mater.”

Haley’s eventual recovery and return to swimming led to numerous awards: the Spirit of Notre Dame Award, the Executive Journal Comeback of the Year Award (1993), the Honda Award for Inspiration (1993-94), the Gene Autry Courage in Sport Award (1994), among others. She was named Woman of the Year at the National Women’s Leadership Conference in Washington DC (June 1994) and a Fellow at the Institute for International Sport in Rhode Island (June 1995). She has also been the keynote speaker at several national gatherings.

“At each of these events, I had the opportunity to speak about my experience and about my love and appreciation for those who helped me,” Haley said. “It is moving, gratifying and inspiring to speak to people about my recovery. It is a gift to pass along hope.”

Haley shared her story in a book, What Though the Odds: Haley Scott’s Journey of Faith and Triumph.

“I didn’t share it with people for a long time, and then once I started to I felt more comfortable doing it,” she says, adding that she “was really inspired by the reaction that I got from people who were going through trials in their own lives.”

Haley lives in Annapolis, Maryland, with husband Jamie DeMaria (also a Notre Dame alum), and their two sons, James and Edward. “We are building our own community here: with friends from our children’s school; at our church, where I teach Sunday School and helped to organize a Small Christian Community of mothers to share our faith; and with the United States Naval Academy, for which we are a sponsor family.”

Notre Dame’s sense of community resonates with Haley to this day. “I lived through a horrible experience while being embraced by—and living in—a Catholic community. That community picked me up. They carried me when I couldn’t walk. Literally and figuratively.”