BETHLEHEM, Pa. \u2013 Every year at Bethlehem’s Celtic Classic, the cheers of the crowd and bagpipes fill the air for the U.S. National Highland Games Championships.<\/p>\n
“These are the elite of all the Highland competitors,” said Jim Morrison, co-field marshal.<\/p>\n
You could say Morrison and Chip Montgomery are the elite of all field marshals.<\/p>\n
The two and their team have made these championships happen for more than 20 years.<\/p>\n
“We take care of the Highland field here, so we fill in the holes, set up the cages\u2026put the flags out,” Montgomery said.<\/p>\n
“We all work together, and we make it happen,\u201d Morrison said.\u00a0\u201cThat’s the best part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both men have decided to retire from their posts after this year.<\/p>\n
“It gets in your blood. It really does. It’s like the two years I was off, I was like, I miss it, and I want to go back,” Montgomery said.<\/p>\n
They have seen a lot of familiar faces over the years \u2014 from fellow volunteers to competitors.<\/p>\n
“It’s great to see these guys again, and we’re always happy when they come back because that means they’re still at the top of their game,” Montgomery said.<\/p>\n
They all share bonds that are inseparable.<\/p>\n
“It’s like a family here,” Morrison said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BETHLEHEM, Pa. \u2013 Every year at Bethlehem’s Celtic Classic, the cheers of the crowd and bagpipes fill the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,59258,153,7377,122164,121665],"class_list":["post-295316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-bagpipes","tag-bethlehem","tag-celtic-classic","tag-field-marshal","tag-highland-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}