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By Tom Archdeacon, Staff Writer Updated 1:03 AM Sunday, January 8, 2012

She’s done a lot, but still ... she’s no Miss Chick.

Justine Raterman was the state tournament MVP the year she led her unbeaten Versailles High School basketball team to the Ohio Division III title.

Now playing for the University of Dayton, she’s won All-Atlantic 10 Conference honors in each of her first three years of college basketball.

And this season, the 6-foot-1 senior is one of 30 players in the nation — and the only player from the A-10 — to be put on the preseason watch list for the Wooden Award, which goes to the top player in all of college basketball.

Yet back home in Versailles — at least over three days in early June each year — nobody gives a cluck.

New Orleans is known for its Mardi Gras. Boston has its marathon and Louisville the Kentucky Derby.

But in Versailles — the Darke County town of some 2,600 people and a whole lot of roosters and hens — there’s nothing bigger than the annual Poultry Days.

“I’ve never been to anything quite like it,” said Raterman’s UD roommate and teammate Patrice Lalor, who’s from Toledo.

Last year’s theme was “Chick-A-Ritaville” and the logo was a ready-to-party chicken with a grass skirt and bikini top flanked by two palm trees.

At Poultry Days, there are tractors and bands, 25,000 slow-roasted chicken dinners, a big Frisbee tournament, a carnival, a parade. “ ... And Miss Chick,” said Lalor.

For 60 years straight — beginning with Bonnie Sue Besecker in 1952 — some lucky Darke County girl has gotten to wear the sash of poultry nobility.

“They bring all the old queens back every year for the parade,” Raterman said. “It’s a pretty big deal.”

And yet the other 362 days of the year, no one wears the hometown crown any more royally than Raterman.

She is one of the best female athletes — not only for what she does on the court, but in the classroom and community — ever to set foot on the UD campus.

A math major who may one day teach, she followed up Thursday’s practice with some volunteer work at an East Dayton day care center.

On the court she’s a difference maker as well.

She is currently fifth all-time in UD women’s basketball history with 1,587 points, eighth in rebounding and third in 3-pointers made.

Although Saturday’s game at UD Arena was an aberration (she struggled with her shooting and scored five points in a 97-46 victory over Rhode Island), she leads the 9-4 Flyers in scoring and rebounding. In the past few weeks she scored 26 points against South Florida, 25 on Gonzaga, 22 against Illinois and 21 against Boston College.

And while her numbers weren’t great Saturday, what stood out was the way she cheered on teammates — especially her backup Olivia Applewhite, who finished with a career-high 18 points.

“She sets an example for us,” said UD coach Jim Jabir. “We’re college athletes but she has a sense of professionalism. There’s a certain standard she sets. Everyone on the team admires and respects her a lot.”

One heroic effort

Nothing enhanced Raterman’s status more than what she did at last season’s Atlantic 10 tournament.

That’s when she turned herself into something of a real-life Rocky, although it was her right knee, not a bent-nosed mug, that got battered.

She went down in the semifinal against Temple, tried to return to the game and soon collapsed again.

But with the championship game the next day against heralded rival Xavier, a team that featured one of the nation’s mightiest front courts in 6-foot-5 Amber Harris and 6-6 Ta’Shia Phillips, Raterman vowed to play.

“It’s quite a story — kind of like Willis Reed limping out of the locker room to play for the (New York) Knicks in Game 7 of the (NBA) Finals,” Jabir said in reference to Reed — who had torn a thigh muscle — trudging onto the Madison Square Garden court to a standing ovation to help the Knicks eliminate the Los Angeles Lakers in the final game of the 1970 championship series.

“So Justine is late coming out of our locker room,” Jabir said with a smile. “Xavier was warming up and Amber Harris, who’d be the third pick in the WNBA draft, sees her coming and goes, ‘Ohhhhh....crap!’

“Here’s this 6-5 monster afraid of little Justine Raterman. That kind of epitomizes who she is, how hard she plays and what she means to us.”

Although Xavier edged the Flyers that day, Raterman managed to score 19 points and pull down seven rebounds.

At the time Raterman said she didn’t know the ACL was torn, she just thought it was a meniscus problem. Once she got an MRI back home, she found out the devastating news and she and her coaches decided to keep it from the other players and everyone else.

“We hadn’t had the NCAA draw yet and we didn’t want everyone focused on that,” she said. Keeping the secret, especially when she either couldn’t practice or would collapse on the court when she tried certain moves , was tough and she finally ’fessed up to Lalor.

“It was pretty hard to keep it from her when I walked in crying,” Raterman said.

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