Students: Make stock car racing state sport

MOORESVILLE - North Carolina's list of 38 state symbols ranges from its official dog (the plott hound) to its official carnivorous plant (the Venus Flytrap).

One symbol it lacks is a state sport. But a group of Lake Norman Elementary School students has quietly worked for nine months in hopes of getting the General Assembly to finally name one: stock car racing.

"State symbols tell us what's important to a state, and stock car racing continues to provide lots of jobs and teachers to train people" in the industry, said Tanner Orr, 11, now in sixth grade at Mount Mourne IB World School and a "crew chief" on the project with classmate Maria Meyerhoeffer.

The students kept their project secret from their classmates and even their parents at first, two of whom work for top Mooresville-based motorsports teams. They didn't want word to leak and have someone trump them with another sport, said student Madison Sommer, 10.

The students worked with state Rep. Grey Mills, R-Mooresville, who's had a bill drafted designating stock car racing as the state sport. Mills said he's getting input from prospective sponsors and co-sponsors in the House and from others familiar with stock car racing.

Mills said lawmakers are trying to incorporate much of the students' proposed wording into the bill.

The Iredell-Statesville Board of Education unanimously endorsed the students' effort in January, and the Mooresville Board of Commissioners is scheduled to take it up on tonight.

If the students succeed, North Carolina would join only nine other states with official state sports.

Most of the 13 students were in fourth grade last spring when teacher Nettie Gambill asked for volunteers on a state symbol project. Eleven of the students are known as "pit crew members" on the project.

Students learned all they could about stock car racing's importance to the state, how 90 percent of teams are based in North Carolina and how Charlotte has the NASCAR Hall of Fame. The students live in a town nicknamed "Race City USA" for its many motorsports teams.

They learned about the sport's economic impact from Craig Depken, associate professor of economics at UNC Charlotte, and about its history from Dan Pierce, chairman of the history department at UNC-Asheville.

Their parents took them on field trips that included the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

Dad Martin Wolfe said the project "is a leadership builder" for the students. "You guys get right down to task and go with it," Wolfe told the students when they met in Gambill's classroom after school last week.

Another sport, basketball, could arguably rival racing as the official sport.

But student Sierra Bice noted Massachusetts already claims basketball as its state sport; it's home to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

It's only logical that North Carolina, with its NASCAR Hall of Fame, so designate stock car racing, she said.

JOIN THE CAUSE

•  Send emails in support of designating stock car racing as North Carolina's state sport to ncstatesport@gmail.com.

•  Friend the effort on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ncstatesport.