![]() MacDonald competes in the women’s amateur A class, the highest class for amateurs. The games’ nine events also include the caber toss, which is effectively throwing a telephone pole end-over-end, and the sheaf, in which competitors stab a hay-filled burlap sack with a pitchfork and fling it over a bar. Heather MacDonald, clad in a green tank top and dark red tartan kilt, puts chalk on her hands and takes her turn throwing the “braemar,”a 13-pound rock likely plucked from a patch of local wilderness. Notably, they are no longer a men-only contest. Now, hundreds of these competitions take place around the world every year, although they have evolved considerably since the 11th century. Highland games are a centuries-old Scottish tradition, but even in the U.S. On a warm, cloudless Saturday in March, the type you’d rarely see in any month in Scotland, the 56th annual Phoenix Scottish Games were held. In the middle of the festivities, a metal fence surrounds the main event: Men and women in kilts and sneakers, many tattooed, forming loose groups around heavy objects in a makeshift “arena.” Outside, bagpipes create an almost constant din. In one of the largest, raucous Celtic bands (one named the Wicked Tinkers) rock out multiple times a day. ![]() In Steele Indian School park in downtown Phoenix, palm trees sway behind white tents filled with meat pies and haggis for sale. ![]()
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