Photos by Jared Soares | The Roanoke Times

Jason Weiner participates in the hammer toss, competing against seven others in Roanoke County's Highland Games.

Billy Shrader, who helped to organize the event, follows through after a caber toss at the Highland Games in Roanoke County. The caber was 17 feet long and weighed 110 pounds.

Jared Soares | The Roanoke Times

Billy Shrader (center) winds up a tape measure at the throw's conclusion.

Jared Soares | The Roanoke Times

Daniel Butner fixes the hammer before the throw event.

By 10:30 Saturday morning, Chad Clark was already soaking wet, his shaved head dripping sweat.

Standing inside an orange spray-painted rectangle on the green grass of Starkey Park in Southwest Roanoke County, he reached down to grab a steel ring, perhaps 8 inches in diameter.

Attached to it was a short piece of chain holding a 56-pound steel weight.

Clark picked up the ring with one hand, swung it across the front of his body, then across the back, and finally swung it out and twirled twice before flinging the mass in front of him.

It sailed 22 feet, 4½ inches, one of the best throws of the day at the first standalone Highland Games in the Roanoke Valley in recent years.

Clark was one of eight competitors, all men and all in kilts, engaging in the traditional Scottish "heavy" games.

The event was sponsored by the Roanoke County Department of Parks, Recreation & Tourism, but was the brainchild of Billy Shrader, a Highland Games enthusiast who, for the past decade, has competed up and down the East Coast.

It was a "loosely organized" affair, Shrader said, being held on the same day as a giant event at Grandfather Mountain, N.C., that began a half-century ago.

Although the Roanoke County event drew only a handful of spectators -- mostly family members of the competitors -- that was all right with Shrader and Roanoke County's special events coordinator Wendi Schultz.

They'll be repeating the event at this fall's big Medieval Fair at Green Hill Park, and hope to build interest in the competition.

Clark was a little disappointed in the turnout, however, given the fact that he'd tried to spread the word at gyms throughout the Roanoke Valley and in numerous places in the Shenandoah Valley.

A competitive power weight lifter, Clark met Shrader through a mutual friend and traveled to see last year's annual Highland Games competition in Radford. In recent weeks, he began practicing with a few of the other competitors in Saturday's games.

"They're really good people," he said. "It's different from other sports," in that the more experienced competitors go out of their way to help instruct those who are new to the games.

That spirit of friendship and caring in the midst of serious competition was also one of the attractions for Shrader. And competitors don't have to have Scottish roots: at the games, everyone who puts on a kilt is a Scot at least for the day, Clark said.

To be considered an "official" competition -- there is no single governing body for Highland Games events, but there are generally accepted rules it must consist of at least three athletes in kilts competing in at least five different events under the oversight of a judge.

Three of Saturday's competitors had traveled up from North Carolina, the rest were from the Roanoke Valley.

They competed in the 56-pound and 28-pound weight throw for distance; the 22-pound and 16-pound hammer toss; the caber toss, which involves tossing a large, tall pole; the sheaf toss for height, where competitors throw a large, burlap sack with a pitchfork; and the 56-pound weight toss for height.

Other Highland Games include the stone toss, similar to a shot put, and foot races. Women also compete in some venues, but there was no women's division Saturday.

Although some sources date the origins of a few of the games as far back as the fourth century, they apparently gained in popularity through the ages in Scotland until the mid-18th century. That was when the conquering English disarmed the Scots, even forbidding the playing of bagpipes.

The games, Shrader said, then became a way to keep men in shape to be soldiers and some of the events may have had direct military applications. Weights could be flung against shield lines, or soaked in a combustible and tossed onto thatched roofs. Cabers might have been used to cross moats or scale walls.

Today's gamesmen, however, are focused on what was almost certainly another aspect of the games -- the simple demonstration of brute strength, Shrader said.

The games last most of the day, with winners calculated at day's end.

Which gets to another difference in the modern games from the ancient:

"First prize typically was a keg of whiskey" in olden times, Shrader said. "Now we usually give away swords, things like that."