What?s in a name? Plenty!

Putting together the stories for today?s section, I was surprised by something I found regarding the nicknames of area teams.

Siegel High School, which edged the Pioneer soccer team on Tuesday, is known as the Stars. They?ve been around a few years now, and pretty much everybody who is familiar with this district knows their nickname.

But is Siegel Middle, which toppled the Warren County Middle soccer squad on Tuesday, also known as the Stars? No, they are, as it turns out, the Cavaliers.

Does that confuse anybody else? Isn?t it pretty much common practice for a middle school and a high school which share a town, and in fact share a name, to also share a team nickname?

Coffee County is the Red Raiders ? for middle school and high school. The same is true of White County?s Warriors, Boyd?s Broncos, and our own Pioneers.

I guess Siegel just has to be different. But I?ll bet it confuses fans when they go from an elementary game one night to a high school game against Cookeville the next.

?Go Cavaliers! Oops! I mean, go Stars!?

The topic got me started wandering around the Internet, as most topics so often do. And while any discussion of nicknames reminds me of my old friend Charles Nored, a Delta State University alum (Go Fighting Okra!), it just took a little bit of surfing to find some of the strangest college nicknames around.

Examples? You know I?ve got ?em.

? If you play sports at Converse College in Spartenburg, South Carolina, you share a name with a classic canvas sneaker.

That?s right, you?re a ?Converse All-Star.?

And no, Chuck Taylor isn?t an alumnus. Converse is, in fact, an all-women?s school.

? Another all-women?s school, Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Va. (home of the Statlers, by the way), has the kind of sweet, cute little nickname you?d expect some young southern ladies to have: The ?Fighting Squirrels.?
Hey, at least they?re fighting.

? If you play ball for New Jersey City University, you?ve already got a rough row to hoe with the name of your school. But to top that off, you?ve got to spend your collegiate career being referred to as a ?Gothic Knight.?

Kind of high-falootin?, aren?t they? They couldn?t just be the ?Knights??
Hey, you?re in New Jersey! The home of Bruce Springsteen! Be the ?Bosses!?
? And finally, it?s been seven score and three years (that?s 143 if you are struggling with the math) since the battle of Gettysburg cost thousands of Americans their lives. But the battlefield is still a sacred site, and the bloody conflict will never be forgotten.

Especially since the teams at Gettysburg College are known as the ?Bullets.?
Are you kidding? The Bullets? Wow, they take things kind of tongue-in-cheek up there, don?t they?

Strange, strange, strange. But do you want to know something? I?ll bet you if there was a Gettysburg Middle School, they?d be the ?Bullets,? too.