Scrimmage v New Prague, Part 1

It's always safe to name a team after an ancient and long departed group. Unlike native Americans, who have legitimate complaints about having been turned into mascots for sports teams, the ancients are no longer around, so no one complains.

But why name a team after the ancient Greeks or those who fought with them? (Or only after some of those who fought with them...don't know of any teams called the Persians.) Might have something to do with the extensive documentation of sports, games, and warlike behavior of the ancient Greeks.

Today we had a match-up between the Trojans of New Prague and our own Richfield Spartans. (That's Max K. in the picture, by the way.) The original Trojans may have lived in what is now Turkey. The Spartans came from the Peloponnesus, which is the southern peninsula of Greece. Homer wrote an epic poem called the Illiad about a war between the Trojans and the Greeks, especially the Spartans. That war was called, wait for it, the Trojan War, duh. Today's game wasn't exactly an epic battle worthy of Homer's Illiad, but as in the Illiad, the Trojans got trounced on their home turf, or in this case, ice. In the posts that follow, you'll see some highlights of the game.