There is something happening across Oklahoma's Scottish community that deserves an uncomfortable conversation — about athletics, festivals, and what we are really trying to build.
Over the last several years, we have seen an increasing number of events appear under the banner of "Highland Games."
On the surface, that sounds like a good thing. More events. More opportunities for athletes to compete. More people seeing cabers tossed, stones thrown and hammers flying.
Surely more Highland Games can only strengthen Scottish culture in Oklahoma.
Except I'm no longer convinced that is true.
The problem is not Highland athletics. Quite the opposite. Highland athletics has always been one of the most exciting, visible and important components of a Scottish festival.
The problem comes when Highland athletics becomes the entire event, while borrowing the identity of the broader Scottish cultural movement that helped create and sustain it.
And Oklahoma may now be reaching the point where the sheer number of small, athletics-driven "Highland Games" is actually weakening the larger Scottish festivals upon which the long-term health of Highland athletics ultimately depends.
Historically, Highland gatherings were exactly that: gatherings.
Athletics were part of them, but so were music, piping, dancing, clans, heritage, food, storytelling, vendors, families and community.
That combination matters.
Someone may initially attend because they want to watch a caber toss. Their spouse may come because of the music. Their children may become interested in Highland dance. Someone else discovers their family clan. Another person buys their first kilt. Someone hears bagpipes performed live for the first time.
That is how culture perpetuates itself.
A field containing athletes throwing heavy objects may be a legitimate athletic competition — and there is absolutely nothing wrong with holding one.
But simply adding "Highland Games" to the name does not automatically make it a Scottish cultural festival.
There is an important distinction between an athletics competition serving the Scottish community and a Scottish cultural event that includes athletics.
We seem increasingly determined to pretend there isn't.
This is where the conversation becomes particularly uncomfortable.
Highland athletes are understandably passionate about their sport. They travel considerable distances, train extensively and spend substantial amounts of their own money to compete.
They deserve respect for that commitment.
But competitors generally experience an event very differently from the people responsible for producing it.
An athlete may evaluate a weekend largely based upon the quality of the field, number of competitors, judging, equipment, prize structure and opportunity to throw.
A festival organizer has to worry about all of that plus everything else.
Insurance. Police. Fire and EMS. Portable toilets. Waste removal. Fencing. Generators. Electricity. Water. Stages. Sound. Entertainment. Tent rentals. Marketing. Ticketing. Security. Parking. Transportation. Licensing. Permits. Vendors. Volunteers. Hotels. Sponsors. Children's activities. Clan participation. Piping. Dancing. Heritage programming.
And somehow, after paying for all of it, producing enough revenue to do it again next year.
Those pieces aren't distractions from Highland athletics.
They are often what pays for Highland athletics.
That distinction seems increasingly forgotten.
For decades, Scotfest made a deliberate decision about Highland athletics.
We certainly featured elite competitors and were proud to host outstanding athletes.
But our philosophy was never simply to construct a showcase for the same small group of established professional or semi-professional throwers.
We invested heavily in amateur athletics.
Why?
Because if you want Highland athletics to survive, someone has to create Highland athletes.
You need first-time competitors. You need novices. You need people who look across the field during a festival and think:
"I could do that."
Then somebody has to give them the opportunity to try.
Scotfest became one of the largest engines for Highland athletics within hundreds of miles precisely because we treated athlete development as part of our cultural mission.
We provided fields, equipment, infrastructure, officials, volunteers, spectators and an environment where amateur classes could flourish alongside more experienced competitors.
That wasn't always the easiest or cheapest way to run athletics.
It was an investment in the sport.
And it worked.
People who first encountered Highland athletics at Scotfest became competitors. Some became accomplished athletes. Some became judges, organizers and ambassadors for the sport.
That is what an ecosystem looks like.
Imagine a region capable of supporting perhaps two or three significant Scottish cultural festivals.
Now imagine eight, ten or twelve smaller events competing for many of the same athletes, vendors, sponsors, volunteers and spectators.
Each individual event may be created with perfectly good intentions.
Collectively, however, they can fragment the market.
The same Scottish vendor cannot attend every weekend. The same regional sponsor isn't going to fund ten events. The same families aren't going to buy admission to Scottish festivals every few weeks. The same volunteer population cannot endlessly reproduce itself.
And eventually people begin thinking:
"We went to a Highland Games last month."
Except what they attended may have been forty athletes competing in a field with several vendors.
That experience now becomes their definition of a Highland Games.
Meanwhile, the major cultural festival trying to bring in pipe bands, musicians, dancers, clans, heritage organizations, children's programming, dozens of vendors and thousands of spectators is competing for attention against events that carry a fraction of the financial and logistical burden.
That is not necessarily growth.
Sometimes it is simply fragmentation disguised as growth.
There is another issue worth saying aloud.
Some within Highland athletics appear increasingly interested only in Highland athletics.
Again, that is understandable. Athletes naturally care most deeply about their own discipline.
But Scottish festivals cannot function that way.
The pipe band cannot say it doesn't care whether dancing survives. The clan organizations cannot say music doesn't matter. The musicians cannot decide athletics is irrelevant. And Highland athletes cannot treat the cultural festivals supporting their sport as little more than convenient places to provide them a field and equipment.
If every component of Scottish culture retreats into its own silo, eventually there isn't a Scottish festival anymore.
There are simply a collection of niche hobbies operating independently.
The strength of events like Scotfest was always that they brought those communities together.
Athletics benefited from music. Music benefited from clans. Clans benefited from genealogy. Vendors benefited from attendance. Sponsors benefited from crowds. And audiences benefited from experiencing all of it in one place.
That cross-pollination is precisely what made the larger festivals powerful.
Nobody should interpret this as an argument that Oklahoma should have fewer opportunities for athletes.
Quite the opposite.
Hold athletic competitions. Create training days. Develop regional leagues. Host amateur clinics. Run throwing workshops. Build athlete development programs.
Those are excellent things.
But we should be more thoughtful about calling every athletics competition a Highland Games and assuming that creating another event automatically strengthens Scottish culture.
Sometimes the better decision might be to strengthen an existing festival instead.
Bring twenty athletes to an established Scottish event rather than creating another competing weekend. Bring your volunteers. Bring your expertise. Build a first-timers competition. Run demonstrations. Recruit spectators into the sport. Help the festival succeed.
Because when a major Scottish festival attracts 20,000 or 30,000 people, Highland athletics suddenly has something extraordinarily valuable:
20,000 or 30,000 potential new fans.
A standalone athletics competition attended primarily by athletes and their families does not provide the same opportunity.
There is a painful irony in watching this happen as Scotfest approaches the end of its run.
For nearly half a century, Scotfest helped create an audience for Scottish culture in Oklahoma.
And for many years, it provided one of the largest platforms for Highland athletics anywhere in this part of the country.
We didn't just invite established athletes.
We helped build new ones.
We gave amateurs a place to compete in front of thousands of spectators.
We invested money, infrastructure and enormous volunteer effort into making athletics a centerpiece of the festival because we believed it mattered.
But maintaining an event of that scale requires an entire Scottish cultural community supporting the institution that supports them.
That relationship cannot only travel in one direction.
If the organizations, athletes, clans, performers and vendors who benefit from major Scottish festivals don't also recognize the importance of sustaining those festivals, eventually they disappear.
And when they do, everyone loses something.
Including the athletes.
The question Oklahoma's Scottish community should be asking isn't:
How many Highland Games can we create?
It should be:
How do we build the strongest Scottish cultural community possible?
Those are not necessarily the same objective.
A strong community probably includes major destination festivals, smaller regional celebrations, athletic competitions, Burns Nights, clan gatherings, piping events, dance competitions and educational programs.
They should complement one another rather than cannibalize one another.
And Highland athletics should absolutely remain one of the centerpieces of that community.
But athletics cannot consume the ecosystem that sustains it.
Because the caber, stone and hammer are extraordinary traditions. They simply aren't the only traditions.
And if we allow the words "Highland Games" to become synonymous with nothing more than an athletics competition, we may eventually discover that in creating more Games, we inadvertently destroyed much of what made them worth preserving in the first place.
Be part of the final chapter.
Join us for one last Scotfest — and help make the last one worthy of everything that came before it.