A bus carrying the Seton Hill University women’s lacrosse team crashed Saturday morning, killing two people and sending several others to the hospital.

The bus was traveling along the Pennsylvania Turnpike in central Pennsylvania when it veered to the right, went over a guard rail and traveled across a grassy area before crashing into a tree, said Bill Capone, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission.

Seton Hill is a small Catholic university in Greensburg, Pa., east of Pittsburgh. According to its website the women’s lacrosse team was scheduled for a 1 p.m. match at Millersville University near Lancaster.

Twenty-seven people, including the driver, were on the bus en route to an afternoon match about 3-1/2 hours away. The crash happened shortly before 9 a.m. EDT.

The driver was pronounced dead at the scene. Another person was airlifted to a hospital and later died. Two others were also airlifted to the hospital, Capone said. The rest of the passengers were taken to nearby hospitals, said State Police Trooper Rob Hicks. Capone said he did not have any reports of serious injuries among the passengers who were not airlifted and many were taken to the hospital as a precaution.

The cause of the crash is still unknown. No other vehicles were involved and the bus was traveling on a straight stretch of the turnpike when the crash occurred, Capone said.

Pennsylvania State Police are investigating. The state’s Department of Environmental Protection was also called to the scene because of a fuel spill caused by the accident.

In a statement, a university spokeswoman said the school’s associate dean of students was en route to the crash site to assist students and their families and that counseling services would be available immediately for students and members of the campus community.

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paloma.esquivel@latimes.com