Thompson Falls student wins county spelling bee
<p>Brooke Bowlin, an eighth-grader at Thompson Falls, won the 29th Sanders County Spelling Bee. She will travel to the state spelling bee.</p>
<p class="p1">Left to right: Brooke Bowlin, 2nd Place Frida Rivera, third place winner Myknezi Blood, and Official Pronouncer Dan Whittenburg.</p>
THOMPSON FALLS—How fitting perhaps that Brooke Bowlin, an eighth-grader at Thompson Falls would win the 29th Sanders County Spelling Bee by spelling “diatribe” unlike the word’s meaning— a bitter or forceful attack—with quiet confidence in the county courthouse on Friday.
19 competitors—ranging from fifth to eighth grade—came from all over here on Friday afternoon. They represented Dixon, Hot Springs, Noxon, Plains, Thompson Falls, and Trout Creek, respectively.
The spelling bee was sponsored by the Sanders County Ledger and First Security Bank.
Dan Whittenberg, official “Pronouncer” of the event, said it was the longest private sponsorship of a county spelling bee in the state. The courtroom benches were full of parents and teachers pulling out cell phones to take pictures, to smile at them, give thumbs-up, or to mouth words of encouragement before the competition began.
The judges, Joann Burk, Sara Czerwinski, and Karen Dwyer, sat at a long table, each with a green card and a red card.
If a student spelled a word correctly: green card. Incorrectly: red card.
Whittenberg explained the rules and how they were able to answer.
Each speller would get a word twice, then they were to spell the word. They were allowed to ask the word’s definition, sentence usage, and place of origin.
As the competition went on, only one student asked for the meaning of a word.
Whittenberg said they would begin by having a practice round.
“This will get you familiar with how I speak, how I pronounce, and get familiar with the microphone,” Whittenberg explained. He added that it was a good opportunity to “get the butterflies out and see how it goes.
The competitors passed through the practice round, each standing up at the microphone on the desk. The room was quiet, and the rounds moved very fast, considering the type of pressure one associates with public speaking, or in this case, public spelling.
The official rounds began, and slowly competitors would dwindle to the last remaining.
The final round saw three competitors from Thompson Falls, Noxon, and Plains make the top three.
Bowlin won with the aforementioned “diatribe,” but that meant that the two remaining spellers, Frida Rivera, an eighth-grader from Noxon, and Mykenzi Blood, a seventh-grader from Plains.
Rivera placed second by spelling “formidable” correctly.
The courtroom silence was met with applause for Bowlin once she was announced as the official winner of the Sanders County Spelling Bee, and that she would be traveling to Billings on Mar. 19 for the State Spelling Bee.
Afterward, Bowlin downplayed winning the Spelling Bee, even offering that “diatribe” was not the most difficult word to spell during the competition.
“The hardest word was “spherical,” she said.
First Security Bank donated gift cards to first, second, and third place.
Bowlin received a $100, Rivera received $75, and Blood received $50.
As people were leaving the courtroom, someone joked to Bowlin that she should take them out to dinner with her winnings.