ZELIENOPLE — Baseball took a while to arrive at Seneca Valley High School.

It was worth the wait.

The school opened in 1964, but the Raiders did not have a baseball team until 1985. Their first game was played exactly 30 years ago this Saturday.

“We decided to celebrate it by a bunch of us getting together Saturday at the top of the hill of Zelienople Park, where we used to play,” said Chad Aitken, a first baseman-pitcher on that original team. “We feel like that day is something worth commemorating.”

Seneca Valley finished 7-8 in section play during that inaugural 1985 campaign, including a 5-4 win over defending league champion Butler in their section debut.

“The score was 4-4 in the bottom of the seventh inning and we wound up winning on a Little League play,” then-coach Dave Florie said. “We had runners at first and third with two outs. We sent the runner from first and on the throw down to second, our other runner broke for home.

“Butler played that well. The throw to the plate was a good one, but our runner knocked the ball out of the catcher’s glove and we won the game.”

The Raiders have gone on to WPIAL and state championships under Florie and current coach Eric Semega, who played for that 1985 team.

“It’s become one of the best baseball programs in the state and that (1985) team got it started,” Florie said. “They should feel a sense of pride in that.”

The original plan this Saturday was for Aitken, pitcher Danny Budinsky and center fielder Mike Kaufman to meet at Zelienople Park and simply play catch together at 1 p.m.

Now the plan is for as many players on that original team as possible to meet at Florie’s house that morning.

“Coach Florie lives near the park. If it’s a decent day outside, we’ll go over to the field from there,” Aitken said. “Otherwise, we’ll visit at the house.”

There were 25 players on the first SV team and there was no junior varsity squad. Aitken said 15 of the players still live in the area.

“I made a bunch of phone calls Saturday,” he said. “It was strange calling some people up I haven’t spoken to in all of these years. But guys have been receptive to this.”

Budinsky — who Aitken is pushing for induction into the SV Athletic Hall of Fame — threw the first pitch in Raiders history. He was 6-2 in that inaugural season.

“I’ll always have that distinction and I love that,” Budinsky said. “We knew most of the players from Butler because we had been playing community baseball for years.

“Chad, Mike and I were always on the same teams growing up.”

Kaufman said it was “satisfying” to know he was a member of an inaugural team that spurned so much success.

“We’re all proud of that,” he said. “Just seeing how good the program became and it keeps getting better ... yeah, I do draw satisfaction from that.

“The guys I feel badly for are the classes ahead of us who never had a chance to play high school baseball for Seneca. There were some great players who we idolized, growing up behind them and watching them play in the community.”

Aitken tossed out names like Jeff Miller and Tony Clark as examples.

“If baseball would have started at Seneca Valley in 1975 instead of 1985, that successful history would have arrived a lot sooner,” Aitken said.

But it’s here now.

And Florie remembers how it started.

“It was a haphazard program at first,” the coach said. “Our games started at 3:45 in the afternoon and school didn’t let out until three.

“The kids jumped on a bus, went straight to Zelie Park, changed into their uniforms in the dugout ... sometimes we couldn’t even take infield practice because we couldn’t get dressed in time. But those kids were dedicated.”

Aitken said players and coaches from the Zelie-Harmony community banded together to get the school district to form the program.

“I was just happy to put on that uniform and represent our school on the baseball field,” Budinsky said. “We all were. We were the first.”