Highland Games back last week

Danny Hagen’s race for Skagit County Assessor is not his only pursuit these days.

The Shelter Bay resident competed in this year’s Skagit Valley Highland Games at Edgewater Park in Mount Vernon on Saturday, July 9.

Sport truly trumped politics last weekend for Hagen, an independent who will face Republican Karie Storle in the November general election. As evidence, Hagen donned a kilt and tee-shirt rather than a candidate’s business suit.

Hagen has made the local Highland Games competition an annual ritual since 2009, except for 2020 and 2021 when it was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

With La Conner’s Brandon Drye he often entered the games over the course of a decade. Drye’s parents, Bobby and Laraine Drye, were spectators at this year games, wheeling granddaughter Bobbi through the park grounds in a baby stroller.

“It’s her first games,” Laraine Drye beamed.

In addition to the sporting events, large crowds gathered along the Skagit River to enjoy bagpipe bands, Celtic folk dancing, sheepdog demonstrations and an array of other cultural programs and presentations.

It was a festive atmosphere that had been missing during the pandemic.

“So, we start anew, careful to not over-extend, but with an eye to providing great family fun and a foundation on which we can build in coming years,” said Celtic Arts Foundation Executive Director Skye Richendrfer.

“It was an incredible day,” Hagen told the Weekly News. “I did well in the events I have fun with, and I didn’t hurt myself.”

Hagen returned home with a handful of Highland Games medals. He was especially pleased with his effort in the sheaf toss, which requires contestants to toss a 20-pound simulated hay bale over a bar with a pitchfork. Hagen’s throw cleared 20 feet.

“It’s a skill event,” the 6’-6” Hagen, who played basketball at California Lutheran University, said of the sheaf toss. “It involves a lot of timing and having long levers. Having grown up on a farm makes it more comfortable for me.”

Another of his favorite events is the caber toss. Competitors fling a 78-pound tapered wooden pole, aiming to flip it end over end anywhere between 15 to 25 feet as straight ahead as possible.

“It’s about accuracy,” Hagen said. “You need to think of yourself as standing at six on a clock face and you want the pole to land at 12.

“There are very few things,” he added, “that feel better than a perfect caber toss.”

Still, noted Hagen, it’s not an event that easily lends itself to training.

“You can’t go to Dick’s Sporting Goods and buy a caber,” he pointed out.

Hagen recalled having cut down trees on the family farm to shape poles with which to practice the caber toss. That is not unusual for a Highland Games entrant, he said.

“A lot of the Highland Games guys are tradesmen,” said Hagen. “They make their own implements.”

That includes attaching heavy weights to chains designed to be thrown for distance and height and connecting a 16-pound ball to a 50-inch cane or PVC pipe for the Scottish Hammer Throw.

Despite doing eight hours of heavy lifting in July heat, Hagen expected to be at full strength Monday when he returned to work and went back on the campaign trail.

“It took me 10 years to figure out how to pace myself,” he quipped, “without being totally wiped out at the end of the day.”