Curling

North Dakota named curling its official state sport in 2023, an easy case for a state with more curling clubs than any other in the country. Long winters and a Scottish and Canadian settlement history had already made curling a fixture of small-town North Dakota decades before lawmakers considered a designation. The bill cleared both chambers by wide margins, passing the Senate 30 to 17 and the House 72 to 21.

A curler slides a 42-pound granite stone down a sheet of ice toward a circular target called the house, releasing it with a slight rotation that curves its path. Teammates sweep the ice in front of the moving stone with brooms, reducing friction to control its speed and distance. Two teams of four alternate throws, aiming to land stones closest to the button at the center of the house while knocking an opponent's stones out of position.

A game runs eight or ten ends, each one similar to an inning, and only the team with the stone closest to the center scores points once all sixteen stones have been thrown. North Dakota's Capital Curling Club in Bismarck, where Governor Doug Burgum signed the state sport bill in 2023, is one of eleven clubs spread across the state.

Curling reached North Dakota with Scottish and Canadian immigrants who settled the Red River Valley in the late 1800s, bringing a game already suited to the region's long, ice-locked winters. The Drayton Curling Club, founded around 1901 on a stretch of frozen river before the town built a rink, is one of the oldest organized clubs in the state. That early foothold let curling spread town by town rather than arrive as a modern import.

Curling in North Dakota is a game more residents play than watch. Eleven clubs operate across the state, the most of any state in the country, running leagues that fill sheets of ice through the winter months in towns far smaller than the cities that host most major sports. That density gave lawmakers a case rival sports, played in only a handful of towns, could not match.

Eleven-year-old Alaina Schmit, a curler from Bismarck, brought the idea to Senator Sean Cleary after noticing North Dakota had never named an official state sport. Schmit and fellow middle school curler Etta Knapp testified before lawmakers and lobbied for the bill themselves rather than leaving it to adults.

The bill passed the Senate 30 to 17 and the House 72 to 21, clearing the legislature by comfortable margins. Governor Doug Burgum signed it into law at the Capital Curling Club in Bismarck on March 23, 2023.