OUTSIDE SACRAMENTO, CA -- When an Elk Grove student was hit by a car at Valley High School in south Sacramento Tuesday afternoon, it didn't take long for bystanders to come to her aid.

Both Valley High School baseball teams were gathered on the field at that school preparing for a scrimmage, when they saw the accident that pinned a visiting Laguna Creek student under a car. Co-head coach Brett Sawyer said he was getting something from the locker room when he heard tires screeching, and a loud "bang." He emerged to see "the entire team sprinting to the parking lot, jumping over fences."

He said eight or nine students lifted the small sedan off the girl, whose upper body was pinned under the rear of the car, while Assistant Coach James Millholland pulled her to safety. Sawyer and another teacher weren't able to get through to 911 on their cell phones, so they ran to their classrooms to call for help. Paramedics arrived and transported the victim to a local hospital; Sawyer said he heard she was expected to recover.

"Once the ambulance left and everything had settled down, we pulled all the guys aside and focused on how proud of them we were," Sawyer said. He said practice was canceled, and the rest of the afternoon was pretty solemn.

"Some guys were still kind of shaken up by the whole ordeal," he said. "She was just a teenager, like them."

Before their game the next day, members of the team received a thank-you, some sunflower seeds and bubble gum from their principal and the president of the school board.