Prior to his senior season, Al Zeiher admits to getting frustrated as he and Saline High School teammate Mark Weist traveled from camp to camp, trying to impress college coaches.

Wanting to put the recruiting process behind him, but with no big-time offers forthcoming, Zeiher committed to play for the one college coach who had consistently shown interest -- Sam Riggleman at Spring Arbor College - way back when there was still snow on the ground.

As the winter turned to spring, it was Zeiher that continued to blossom.

“I made myself better through the year. I probably wasn’t up to (the Division I) level when we were at camps … but I used it as motivation,” Zeiher says. “I worked hard in the offseason and made myself better.”

The baseball coaches association considered him one of the top 23 players in the state as a junior and placed him on its Dream Team. As a senior, he became the best player in Michigan, the state’s Mr. Baseball.

“That was quite an honor,” said Zeiher, who adds the AnnArbor.com Washtenaw County Player of the Year title to his long list of accolades. “My team did so well that I was fortunate enough to pitch in some big games … I stepped up in those games and my teammates helped out around me.”

Though he doesn’t have the long, lanky frame that college coaches want to see in a pitcher, the 6-foot, thick-bodied Zeiher was nearly unhittable in high school.

A total of 295 batters stepped to the plate to face him in 2010 - batters from an aggressively-built schedule full of solid competition - and nearly one-third of them (90 in all) sulked back to the dugout after a strikeout.

Of the 44 hits he did allow in 90 innings of work, 37 of them were singles. He gave up five earned runs and eight walks all season while finishing with a perfect 12-0 record and a 0.45 ERA.

Oh yeah, he also batted .396 with 42 RBIs and played a solid third base when he wasn’t on the mound.

“I wasn’t going out there to prove anybody wrong, I was going out there for my teammates. I was playing for them,” Zeiher says of his pre-season frustrations. “I had already chosen a school and I was just going to go out and do the best for my team.

Zeiher, a National Honor Society student whose family moved to Saline from Carmel, Ind., when he was a seventh grader, made a lasting impact on the Hornets’ baseball program. Each of his three years on the varsity team, Saline played in a Division 1 state championship game.

He saw time on the mound in the title games of 2008 and 2009, but as the staff ace in 2010 it was his responsibility to make sure the Hornets got back.

His complete-game, three-hitter with eight strikeouts in a 3-1 semifinal win over Saginaw Heritage accomplished just that. But the Hornets couldn’t complete the deal, losing to league rival Pioneer in the final.

“It was pretty special three years. I was fortunate enough to be on three outstanding teams,” said Zeiher, who admits the sting of three straight championship losses still haunts him.

“Maybe once it would have been easy to look back and realize how great it was to be there,” he says. “But three times? You taste it three times? Some day I’ll be able to look back and realize it’s still pretty special what we’ve done … and some day coach (Scott) Theisen will get one.”

While Saline continues to hunt for its first MHSAA baseball title, Zeiher and Weist - who batted a county-best .595 this season - are off to vie for a spot in the NAIA World Series, which Spring Arbor played in for three straight years from 2006-08.

“It’s been a dream of mine to play in college, and I made it a reality,” said Zeiher, who quickly went from a recruit to a gentle recruiter.

“I put the bug in (Weist’s) ear, but wasn’t going to pressure him. It was a big decision. But now I’m hoping (Saline junior) Garrett Gordon joins us next year.”