By The Associated Press

DICKINSON, N.D. - The father of one of three missing college softball players said Tuesday the women often went star gazing near a lake in southwestern North Dakota. One of them, Ashley Neufeld, came from Brandon, Man.

Lenny Gemar told ABC's "Good Morning America" in a telephone interview that the Dickinson State University students would hang out by Patterson Lake near the city.

The young women would "just look up at the stars and, you know, chat about the things that teenagers will chat about," he said.

Police have refused to speculate on what might have happened to Neufeld, 21, Kyrstin Gemar, 22, of Grossmont, Calif., and Afton Williamson, 20, of Lake Elsinore, Calif.

Foul play was not suspected but was not being ruled out, police said in a statement.

Dickinson Police Officer Thomas Grosz said the search for the women resumed Tuesday morning with at least three aircraft.

He said members of the fire department also were taking a boat out on Patterson Lake, just southwest of Dickinson, a city of 16,000 people about 160 kilometres west of Bismarck and 96 kilometres east of the Montana state line.

Police said they searched the women's rooms and were interviewing their classmates, friends and people near Killdeer, north of Dickinson.

"It's scary. It's just a numbing feeling that you have for those kids. There's just so many questions - you're almost speechless because you don't know much," said Dickinson State softball coach Guy Fridley.

The young women were believed to be in a white 1997 Jeep Cherokee with California plates when they were last heard from late Sunday night, authorities said.

Lenny Gemar said he and his wife arrived in North Dakota late Monday night to try to help find his daughter and her teammates. He said they were met at the airport by a university official and updated on the case and investigators' efforts.

"They haven't found anything that I'm aware of," he said. "No tire tracks, no clothing ... nothing at all to give us any indication where the girls ended up."

Gemar said he had not spoken with the friend who said she received the distress calls, but it didn't seem like the women were being attacked.

"There was nothing to indicate that there was an assailant or anything like that going on," he said. "It just comes across as sounding more like an accident of some kind."

Dickinson Police Lt. Dave Wallace has said a friend of the women received two telephone calls from them, about one minute apart, before the line cut out on Sunday.

Police described the first one as a "very scratchy" call for help that mentioned the women were near a lake and water.

The friend who received the calls called 911 to report that the women needed help, police said.

Authorities searched a 48-kilometre radius of the cell phone tower north of Dickinson where the calls came through on Monday, using three airplanes and officers on the ground.