Names were so boring when I was growing up.

You had your Mikes and your Scotts and your Jims.

You had your Smiths and Joneses and Millers.

Every now and then you’d get something super special like a Meredith or a Dakota.

Sometime between then and now, names evolved. The stranger the better.

The popular names became so 1971.

I, for one, am thankful for that. It makes my job all the more entertaining.

One of the great joys of mine is filling out a scorebook or grabbing a Little League email with some interesting monikers mixed in among the mundane.

Every year I like to gather the best of the best and put them in a column. I decided to do something a little different this year and round up some of the best from this spring.

And there were many.

What all these names have in common is they belong to excellent athletes and excellent students.

So, let’s drop some names.

Yes. It’s Fun With Names time again:

Zachary Junk and Abbie Thrower, Knoch. I remember taking these two names in Little League scores years ago, now they are key cogs on their high school baseball and softball teams at Knoch.

I’m going to write what everyone is thinking: Both should be pitchers (oddly enough, they are) and these two crazy kids should get married.

Why? Because it would be the Junk-Thrower wedding, of course.

Jamie Moyer can conduct the ceremony.

Shannon Daugherty, Oil City boys tennis. It’s not quite spelled the same as Shannon Dougherty, the one-time star of the original 90210, and he’s a dude, not a brooding teenage girl. But it’s close enough in my book.

I scoured the Oil City tennis roster and was a bit disappointed his doubles partner was not Luke Perry or Brandon Walsh.

Beatrice Goodyear, Mount Lebanon track. With a name like that, she should be playing quiddich at Hogwarts, or representing District 7 in the Hunger Games.

Hyte Eurich, Knoch baseball. It’s just fun to type and say. Try it: Hyte Eurich. Hyte Eurich. Hyte Eurich.

I think Knoch has the early lead for the All-Cool-Names school.

For instance, Mandi Boldy, Knoch’s star lacrosse player. That’s another name that is fun to say. And Chandler Krelow and Jhoey DeWalt, Knoch softball players.

Alessandro Marotto, Karns City baseball. This may be my personal favorite.

His name just sounds like a baseball player. If I were a public address announcer, I would count the batters until he walked up to the plate.

“Now batting for Karns City, Allllessssandro Marrrottttooooo.”

Justice Seeker, A-C Valley baseball. Another one of my all-time favorites, this name just oozes interesting.

I get the feeling he will go into law enforcement or become an attorney.

Mike Kilroy is a staff writer for the Butler Eagle.