Loch Lomond Highland Games 2024 cancelled

[OC Richard]

It's been happening here too.

Two or our California Highland Games, Woodland and Monterey, were held for years up through 2019.

By California law everything was cancelled in 2020 and 2021.

In 2022 the Monterey Games were held, but not since.

The Woodland Games, one of California's largest Games, has not returned.

For Woodland, it seems that several of the people who had run the Games for decades retired during Covid, and nobody has stepped up to fill their shoes.

This left only one Highland Games in northern California, Pleasanton, for pipers and drummers to compete at. They want competitions in order to build up their standings in the Western US Pipe Band Association.

What emerged to give Pipe Bands and Solo pipers and drummers opportunities to compete was the "Pipes & Pubs" system of small competitions held in pubs across the state.

In a couple weeks in Woodland there will be sort of a halfway event, larger than Pipes & Pubs but smaller than a full-scale Highland Games, with sanctioned solo piping, solo drumming, Pipe Bands, and Highland Dancing, held as a Street Fair in old downtown Woodland's Main Street. It's a step in the process of the Woodland Games getting back on solid footing.