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“We’re super excited,” said Mike Nelson, one of the North Dakota’s champion sculptors, in an interview with Lake Geneva Regional News after the win. He was joined by his team members Jay Ray and Josh Zeis. All are residents of Fargo, North Dakota.
The North Dakota team, dubbed “Team Jay Ray w/Snowkraft” in honor of Ray, its team captain, will now go on to compete for the international snow sculpting title. Next winter, the trio will go head-to-head with some of the planet’s best artists at the World Snow Sculpting Championship in Stillwater, Minnesota. Plans for that sculpture are already underway.
North Dakota’s victory is especially impressive given that this was only the second year the state has fielded a team. Meanwhile, many of the other contenders have been competing for decades. Iowa’s team captain, for example, has been sculpting snow for more than 50 years.
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After three days of intense packing, chiseling, and smoothing, a team of sculptors from North Dakota narrowly beat out its competition in the 2023 U.S. National Snow Sculpting Championship in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. The team worked through the night, making the most of frigid temperatures to get its submission done in time. The winning sculpture was an incredibly detailed, 10-foot-tall “Nemean Lion,” complete with icicle-like incisors and razor-sharp claws.
Team Jay Ray bested 14 other teams in total, including three-time national champion Sculptora Borealis from Wisconsin, as well as a formidable team from Alaska, which placed second.
The cherry on top: Team Jay Ray also took home the coveted People’s Choice Award, which means the threesome is going home to Fargo with not just one blue ribbon, but two.
