Whether high or low, all roads lead to Pleasanton this weekend, at least for people looking to learn more about Scottish heritage and tradition. That’s because the Caledonian Club of San Francisco is hosting its annual Scottish Gathering and Games at the Alameda County Fairgrounds Sept. 2-3. The games kicked-off today with the annual “March Under the Arch,” bringing marching bagpipe bands and dancers down Main Street and under the arch to announce, “The Scottish are coming!”
“It’s a way to remind everyone that the ‘Scottish circus’ is in town,” said John Biggar, chief of the Caledonian Club. “You don’t have to wear a kilt, but come.”
Highland Games are a Scottish tradition dating back to before recorded history and modern-day Scots keep the games alive as a way of celebrating their heritage. The games include strong-man athletic, bagpipe and Highland dancing competitions, as well as booths for Scottish clans to display their families’ heritage and for people to search their own family’s genealogy.
The Caledonian Club of San Francisco held its first Scottish Gathering and Games in 1866, the year after the American Civil War ended, making this the club’s 141st game. Since then, the club has not missed a year, and the event has grown to be the largest Highland Games in North America. Last year, over the course of the two days, nearly 45,000 people attended. In fact, around the world, the Pleasanton games are known as “The Big One.”
“When Scots are talking at other Highland Games and they say they’re going to ‘the big one,’ everyone knows that’s the Pleasanton games,” Biggar said.
Part of what makes the Pleasanton games so popular is that it’s also the World Highland Games Championship competition.
“At smaller games, you can go and compete as a novice trying it out, but at Pleasanton you can’t just come and say I’d like to compete. You have to qualify somewhere else first and prove you are a worthwhile competitor,” explained James Jardine, historian for the Caledonian Club.
Several “big names” on the professional Highland games circuit will compete this weekend including Harrison Bailey III from Pennsylvania, Sean Betz from Nebraska, Kerry Overfelt from Kentucky, Larry Brock from North Carolina and the reigning World Champion Ryan Vierra from California.
With events like the caber toss, stone put, Scottish hammer throw and weight over the bar, the athletics competition is a far cry from the typical sports Americans are used to playing. Take for example the caber toss, perhaps one of the most recognizable events in the Highland Games. It is just what it says: a man takes a caber–a wood pole that weighs 120-150 pounds and is 13-14 feet wide–and literally tosses it. The goal is to have the caber do a 180 spin in the air and land directly in front of the tosser. Competitors are judged on accuracy rather than distance. In the weight over the bar event, athletes throw a 56-pound weight over a bar with one hand. Each round the bar is raised and only athletes who clear the height that round advance to the next.
Other events may seem a bit more familiar. The weight throw resembles the modern-day hammer throw seen in the Olympics, where a competitor takes a weight and tosses it while standing in one place, with the winners judged on distance. Similarly, the stone put (pronounced “foot”) resembles the Olympic shot put with competitors tossing a heavy stone for distance. Within this event, there are actually two categories–the lighter stone event, which ironically is called the “heavy stone,” and then the heavy stone event, called the Braemar stone, named after Braemar Royal Castle in Scotland.
Although these sporting events are ingrained in Scottish tradition, there is little recorded history about their origins.
“It wasn’t something historians or chroniclers of the moment recorded. They were more interested in political things, and that’s what got written up as so-called history, so the sporting world was not as well documented,” Jardine said. But that doesn’t mean people do not speculate about the origins of the games.
“There are so many opinions about how the caber toss was started,” Jardine explained. “One of the more ridiculous ones is that these guys would chop down a tree and then toss it off a fjord and make a bridge out of it. Of course, people counter that by saying why wouldn’t they just have walked around?”
“The whole concept started in the Scotland Highlands where they were very clannish,” Biggar added. “Families would get together, throw a picnic and one family would say to the other family, ‘We can throw a 50 pound rock farther than you.’ It was just part of the fun and years later they started competing in events.”
Why the games stuck is somewhat of a mystery. Jardine chalks it up to the fact that, as his son-in-law of Scottish and Danish decent says, “the Scots have to do everything there way.”
In addition to the athletic competition, the Highland Games also include competitions in piping, drumming and Highland dancing. Even sheep dogs get in on the competition, running through timed courses in the “sheep dog trials,” which happens to be one of the most popular events, Jardine said. The piping and dancing competitions are just as competitive as the sporting events with bands coming from across the country to compete.
Just about every Scottish Games–whether in the United States, Scotland or elsewhere–will include athletics, piping, dancing and clan tents, but each one may add a few different elements as well that make their own game unique. At the Pleasanton games, the Caledonian Club has begun bringing Celtic rock groups to perform, Biggar said.
“Celtic rock is combining rock music with bagpipes,” he explained. “It’s a lot of old tunes revisited and amped up, pumping major voltage, and bringing in younger audiences.”
Not that the club needs to do anything to bring people to the games, which are already huge. With thousands of people taking part in the games, either as spectators or participants, the Caledonian Club, which is a nonprofit, entirely volunteer-based organization, needs to bring in hundreds of volunteers to help pull off the event. Fortunately, more than 200 volunteers come out, willing to help with a variety of tasks that can range from making sure bands are on time for their performances to selling merchandise. Volunteers are not necessarily club members. In fact, many people who are either interested in the games or have children involved with some aspect of the event help keep it running. Volunteers also travel long distances to help at the games, some coming from as far away as Sacramento, Sonoma County or southern Santa Clara County.
All the pre-game work, however, is done by Caledonian members. About 60 Caledonian members either lead or are members of committees that start planning for that year’s games nearly a full year in advance. Most of the pre-work involves working out scheduling with judges, bands and athletic competitors.
“Because people are coming from all over, as far away as Australia and Tokyo, they have to start saving money and they need to know they’re coming and get their schedules in line far in advance,” Biggar said.
In fact, it was due to the growing number of people coming to the games from all over the state, country and world that prompted the Caledonian Club to move it to the Fairgrounds in 1994. The event was previously held at the Santa Rosa Fairgrounds, but with only a two-lane highway leading into those grounds, the traffic into the games became a problem, Biggar said. The Fairgrounds in Pleasanton, located between Interstates 580 and 680, provided a more ideal location, he added.
But, logistics aside, Pleasanton also made an ideal home for the games as it is a sister city with Blairgowrie, Scotland. The Pleasanton Blairgowrie Fergus Sister City Organization (PBFSCO) provides many volunteers for the games and many of its members are also members of the Caledonian Club. In fact, three of the Caledonian Club’s past chiefs were members of PBFSCO, said PBFSCO President Malcolm Carden. Perhaps the only reason the clubs do not overlap entirely is because the Caledonian Club actually has much stricter criteria for membership–only men can join and they must prove that they are of Scottish ancestry–whereas anyone who is interested in the sister city alliance can join PBFSCO.
During the week leading up to the games, there are many Scottish-themed events around town, one of which is the pub night sponsored by the PBFSCO.
“It is part of our social contribution to the games more than anything else,” Carden said. “It’s something we’ve always done and it’s one of the few events that links the games to the local community.”
Another Pleasanton link to the games is Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Captain Scott Walsh, who was injured in a firefighting accident earlier this year. Walsh is a member of the Caledonian Club and PBFSCO. To honor Walsh, and bid him warm wishes in his continuing recovery, there will be a salute to him on Sunday during the games’ closing ceremonies.
Biggar said that he hopes Pleasanton residents take advantage of the chance to learn a bit about Scottish heritage and enjoy the games this weekend:
“You get to hear the bagpipes and see the caber toss–things that people usually only see on postcards and travel logs, but it is here, in living color right in Pleasanton.”
Going to the games
The Scottish Gathering and Games is this weekend, Sat.-Sun., Sept. 2-3 from 8 a.m.-6 p.m. at the Fairgrounds. Adult admission is $15 for one day or $22 for two days. Tickets for youth ages 8-16, seniors age 65 or older and handicapped persons are $10. Children 7 or younger get in for free.
