Minotaurs, ships, and the transient nature of sports

It's a soccer post, I promise.

The dude killed a minotaur.

We should talk about that and nothing else. He straight up killed a minotaur and yet, somehow, that's not the thing we talk about when we talk about him. 

And guess what? That's not the part that I'm going to talk about either. But I wanted to state, up front, before we go any further, that the dude slayed a minotaur and that fact should not go unremarked upon. It has now been remarked upon, so we can continue.

But seriously. Do you know what it takes to kill a minotaur? Add in the fact the minotaur was kept in a labyrinth prison so that even if you do kill it, you may not be able to get back out without dying yourself. Some say he used a sword to defeat the minotaur. Others say he used brute force after he lost his sword in battle and defeated it with his bare hands. Either way, he did it.

Ok, ok, yes, Theseus defeated the beast on the island of Crete with the help of King Minos' daughter Ariadne (who  had fallen in love with him and gave him the ball of thread that Theseus used to let him find his way out of the maze), but (for some reason) we're not here to talk about that today.

Instead, we're going to talk about the famous Ship of Theseus.

(Editor, in the voice of one of Washington's soldiers in that Nate Bargetze SNL sketch, "Ship of... Theseus, sir?)

Yes, once Theseus defeated the minotaur, he rescued those sent to be human sacrifices to the minotaur and set sail to return to to Athens. We'll skip over the part where he abandons his Ariadne on the way back to Athens. Don't feel too bad for Ariadne, she eventually marries the Greek God Dionysus. Anyway, he eventually makes it back to Athens to much acclaim, but not before forgetting to put up the white sails instead of the black ones which indicated Theseus had died. This caused his father, the king, to become so distraught that he threw himself off a cliff into the sea.

(Editor, in that same voice, "But the ship, sir? What became of that?")

Having returned a hero, the Ship Theseus returned in became something of a memorial that remained in the Athenian harbor for years. And years. And years. Like, centuries it stayed in the harbor. According to Plutarch's Life of Theseus, (or, more accurately, according to Wikipedia, citing Plutarch, I not smart enough to actually read Plutarch and while I appreciate that you think I do, I am not that person), "they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place."

Why was the ship kept in such good shape? Because the Athenians had pledged to honor the God Apollo every year and sent the ship on a religious mission to the island of Delos (which, I don't have to tell you, is one of the most sacred sanctuaries of Apollo). So sacred was this journey that no executions were allowed between when the religious ceremony began and when the Ship of Theseus returned, which apparently took several weeks.

Over time, wood, as it is wont to do, rots so over time the wood of Theseus' ship had to be replaced. At some point it became unclear how much of the original ship remained, raising the philosophical question of if it should be considered the same ship or if it was now a completely new vessel, which is known as the Ship of Theseus paradox. (The dude killed a minotaur. Find something to name after that fact.)

I started covering Tormenta in 2022 (good timing, I know.) Not a single player from that 2022 team is on the 2025 roster. Jake Dengler was the only member of that 2022 team still on the roster in 2024, but he's signed with FC Naples. 

In essence, the entire boat has been replaced. 

On some level, it's hard because we all have favorite players and they're not out there representing your team anymore. Some move up a level. Others move to a different team in the league. Others head off on new journeys and adventures as their time on the field comes to an end. But new players will come in and take their place on the field. 

We'll get new favorite players. They won't replace our favorite players from years past, but instead will join them in our memories. 

This ship will still be the same, but it'll just have different parts. 

The Athenians didn't care that the ship in their harbor wasn't the exact ship Theseus used. The ship was a tangible connection to the past. It was something they could look at and remember their great hero. It didn't matter that the wood was different. The idea of the ship was more important than the wood of the ship.

In the same way, it doesn't matter that the players aren't the same. (As I said previously, I want them all to move on after two years or so to bigger and better things.) But the idea of Tormenta, a team that connects the past to the present, is what keeps me coming back year after year. The 2025 team, in whatever form it takes, is a tangible connection to the past. They are out there today because of the players before them. And the players of tomorrow will be there because of what takes place in 2025.

This ship is always going to be changing. But the ship will always be the same.