The University of the Southwest’s golf teams were making the kind of drive familiar to athletes at plenty of small colleges — aboard a passenger van around sunset and after a day of competition — on Tuesday night when a pickup rumbled into view.
The truck, the Texas authorities said Wednesday, soon struck the bus on the rural road, a tragedy that left nine people dead, including the university’s golf coach and six of his players. The wreck was among the worst accidents involving sports teams in recent years.
“The U.S.W. campus community is shocked and saddened today as we mourn the loss of members of our university family,” the university, a nondenominational Christian school in Hobbs, N.