Bees determine spelling champs

Nick Ianniello

Mineral Independent

The competitors for the Mineral County Spelling Bee were chosen last week when Superior and Alberton Schools held their annual spelling bee competitions.

“I think they all had a great time,” said Superior Spelling Bee Coach Trish Donovan.

Students involved in both spelling bees had to spell words provided by Scripps, a national spelling bee organization. After having the words read to them in competition, the students could ask for the word’s definition, part of speech, origins or to have it used in a sentence.

Although the situation did not arise, had a parent or teacher felt that a student had been disqualified unfairly when they had spelled the word correctly, they could challenge the judge’s ruling. The judges would then look over their decision again to ensure that the spelling bee had been properly officiated over.

When a speller misspelled a word, they were removed from the competition. However, if every speller in a round misspelled their word, all of the spellers from that round were brought back into the competition.

Superior’s spellers held their spelling bee Tuesday afternoon in the school’s gymnasium. A group of 24 students from fifth through seventh grade participated in the event.

Donovan worked with the students after school for the three weeks preceding the competition, helping them quiz each other and put on mock spelling bees to prepare for the event.

“I think they did great,” Donovan said.

After the first round of spelling in Superior, 14 students were eliminated and only 10 remained in the second round.

After a tough second round only Austin King and Randall Johnson were left to duke it out in the final rounds of the spelling bee.

After seven more tough rounds king finally came out on top by correctly spelling zenith and hazard.

King’s correct spelling of zenith came as a surprise even to him, as his intitial response to the word was, “Spell what?”

King said that he likely did not study nearly as much as he should have and said that he would have to work harder before competing in the county spelling bee.

“I was lucky,” King said.

He added that Johnson had put up a tough fight and was quite a talented speller.

“He did an awesome job, and he’s probably a lot better than me,” King said humbly.

Donovan said that she was very impressed with the group’s performance as a whole. Superior will be sending the top four spellers from each grade to the county spelling bee in St. Regis on March 11 at 7 p.m.

Austin King, Derik Yerian, Brendan Wilkinson, and Heather Kelly will be representing the seventh graders, Patricia Gaston, Vicente Guerrero, Wyatt Zylawy, Jordan Mueller will be representing the sixth graders and Randall Johnson, Katie Derry, Aaron Kelly, Trenton Constant will be representing the fifth graders. No eighth grade students participated from Superior.

“I’m really proud of them I thought they were all really good sports and they tried really hard. They did their best and I’m proud of them,” Donovan said.

Alberton held their spelling bee Wednesday morning in the school’s cafeteria, and the teachers helped the students get pumped up for the event.

“We’re going live after this one,” said Jake Giffin after the spellers went through their practice round. “Are you guys nervous?”

After the first round, 13 competitors had proven that they were not nervous by making their way into the next round of competition.

Only three competitors, David Pick, Jaymen Sibert and Amber Brown made it into the third round and Sibert was pulled out for misspelling bigot in round four.

Pick correctly spelled gorilla and census to win the competition.

This is the second time Pick, an eighth grader, has won the Alberton spelling bee. He came out on top as a fifth grader as well.

“I didn’t study nearly as much this time as I did when I was in fifth grade,” Pick said.

Pick said that this year he spent some time with a classmate calling out words to one another, but other than that he had not really prepared for the spelling bee.

Pick added that he had had some worth competition up onstage with him, as Brown had definitely given him a run for his money.

“She did really good,” Pick said.

Alberton will only be sending Pick, Sibert and Brown to St. Regis for the final bee.

“I think they all did really good this year,” said Giffin.