Best high school mascot in North Dakota: Top 5 candidates

From Spoilers to Hi-Liners, meet the best high school mascots in North Dakota

Woodchucks don't really chuck wood, but they chuck dirt like nobody's business.

Holstein cows, on the other hand, produce an average of 9 gallons of milk per day.

What do these two fun facts have to do with high school sports? Read on.

SBLive Sports' love for unique mascots with interesting back stories has been well documented.

We've crowned Hodags and Imps the past couple of years in national high school mascot contests, and now we're taking a spin through every state.

Over the next couple of months we'll go from Alabama through Wyoming featuring each state's best high school mascots, and then give readers a chance to vote for their favorite. Our North Dakota poll will post Nov. 9 on highschool.si.com and stay open through Nov. 16.

Here are the top 5 high school mascots in North Dakota:

Grafton Spoilers

Unlike the Dark Horses of North Carolina who’ve been anything but dark horses in sports, Grafton’s teams are said to have become the Spoilers by being spoilers. The small school developed such a reputation for winning as the underdog that Spoilers stuck.

Kenmare Honkers

Canada geese are commonly referred to as "honkers" for the loud sound they make, and there are large populations of the birds in Kenmare. Instead of trying to drive the birds away, the city immortalized them with the highest honor: representing the town as the high school's mascot.

New Salem Holsteins

Dairy farming is big in New Salem, and in 1974 the city celebrated its dairy farmers by erecting a 38-foot-high fiberglass Holstein cow named Salem Sue. New Salem has the only Holsteins in the country among U.S. high schools, and its logo of a cartoony cow is one of the best in the country.

St. John Woodchucks

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Woodchucks don’t actually chuck wood, but they can chuck about 700 pounds of dirt in a day. That kind of chucking prowess (regardless of the substance being chucked) definitely makes the Woodchucks a well-qualified mascot, but St. John has them all to itself.

Valley City Hi-Liners

Valley City High School has been the Hi-Liners since 1926, in honor of the Hi-Line Bridge built in 1908. The bridge is 3,096 feet long and rises 160 feet above the Sheyenne River.

(Feature photo by Gillis Benedict/Livingston Daily)

—

-- Mike Swanson | swanson@scorebooklive.com | @sblivesports