You might say that Mallory Fountain’s “banded together” to welcome her back to Andalusia Elementary Tuesday.

The fifth grader returned to school more than two weeks after being involved in bad car accident, and members of her Starz dance team showed their support by wearing headbands.

On the night of March 3, while heading home from Starz practice, Fountain and her mother, Charity Galloway, were involved in a two-vehicle wreck.

Galloway’s car hydroplaned into oncoming traffic, causing Fountain’s side of the vehicle to be hit. Both were wearing seatbelts, but the force of the impact caused the car to flip and ejected both from the vehicle.

Galloway suffered four broken vertebrae and Fountain sustained substantial head injuries.

“It could have been a lot worse,” Galloway said. “All the injuries that we have are going to heal.”

WHen preparing to return to school this week, Fountain was told she would have to wear either heavy gauze over the injured area, or a smaller bandage with a headband around it.

“She was sort of feeling self conscious about having to go to school like that,” Galloway said. “Then her friends decided they wanted to wear headbands to school to show Mallory how much they love and support her.”

Fountain’s Starz instructor, Katie Poole, sent out texts on Monday night to the parents of girls in the class and told them about the idea.

“The girls decided they wanted to do something to support Mallory,” Poole said. “Nicole Pettie said something to me about it, so I sent out texts to the parents and told them we wanted as many girls as possible to participate. Mallory is a really great kid and we’ve missed her at practice, but we wanted her to know that we are all here for her.”