Welcome Back!
The concept of The Rat’s Nest began back in the late 1970’s. I started teaching at Bellaire High School in 1968 (after graduating in 1964), and was immediately immersed in both journalism and athletics.
Reyman “Bud” Bonar was the athletic director and wasted no time in getting me involved in athletics selling tickets. Then Claire Cribbs and Terry Snively recruited me to keep the scorebook for the boys’ basketball team, a gig that has lasted 54 years and 2,194 consecutive reserve/varsity games.
As the advisor for the BELJUAN, the school’s yearbook, I was introduced to photography, and, in the late seventies, started taking senior pictures, thereby creating The Rat’s Nest.
When Mark Matz took over the basketball program, he wanted me to create a game program and a system of keeping stats. So two more areas were opened. I was also writing a lot of articles in scholastic journalism magazines, so The Rat’s Nest was my go-to name.
In the early eighties, while I was operating the Bellaire Print Shop. Sam Mumley, the Executive Secretary of the OVAC, saw what I was doing at Bellaire
and asked me to start researching championships for the Conference. Yet another area opened.
When I stepped back from the publications, I let The Rat’s Nest go. But I still remained doing basketball stats and research. Then, in 1999, I took over for Mumley and started to better understand the research aspect of it and the wealth of information involved. Programs, newspaper articles, interviews kept accumulating, files of material that I had no idea what to do with it all.
Meanwhile, my son had taken over the domain of theratsnest.org, unbeknownest to me. For the last couple years, I’ve been trying to decide what to do with everything I’ve accumulated, researched, and produced. Now pushing eighty, I realize that there’s a lot of worthwhile historical data that needs to be preserved for future generations and historians.
So after talking to the local library and my son, it was decided that this website would be the best approach. I hope you find it insightful, informative, and worthwhile. Should you have any comments, suggestions, or corrections, please drop me an e-mail at tom@theratsnest.org
Thanks, and enjoy.
Thomas E. Rataiczak,
Spirit, Pride, Tradition
Always a Big Red