County Spelling Bee Results

We just got into the high school with all 36 top spellers in the county. J was sitting in chair 1. So that was good! There were 3 judges (H from H town, one from At town, and the librarian from CHS, our friend K). A teacher from An town pronounced the words. She was very "clear" in her pronunciations! I give her high marks on that.

After they went over the rules, they did a practice round. J's word was "design." He asks for a definition. He thinks it over and says "disign." By this time I am closing my eyes, its a good thing that this was a "practice round."During the practice session, several of the kids got the words wrong and that made me feel a whole lot better. After the practice session came round1. He got the word "ballot." I held my breath. Was he going to get that one right? He spelled it correctly. Whew!! He got passed round 1, that was better than yesterday. The words that they gave them in round 1 were VERY hard. Bequeath, cantata, dearth, fiery, alamo, algebra, cobalt, easel, and bagel. In the first round 17 spellers went out.

Round 2. J's word was "primal." He spelled that one correctly. I uttered "PTL." The words that kids missed were babushka, semantics, crochet, paprika, and finale. All three fifth graders from H town remained in that round. This time they went down by another 5 spellers.

Round 3 and 14 spellers left. J's word was "affinitity." My eyes went big! I didn't even know how to spell THAT word. So he tried and missed it by one letter. At least he did try and it was a verry hard word. The other two fifth graders also went out on this round. O got vibrado and Bry got gestapo. In that round they lost 8 spellers.

Round 4 and 6 spellers left. Aquacduct and souvenir. They had to give out some easy words in that round such as "psalm" and "incredible." It went into round 5 and there was 4 spellers left. Three of the spellers went down and one girl kept spelling. So they proclaimed her as champion and had a spell-off for 2nd and 3rd place, which was ridiculous. There should have been a spell off between first and second. So first place went to a girl from At town (a 6th grader), 2nd place a boy from An town (an 8th grader), and 3rd went to the one who won the H school bee (an 8th grader). The winner goes to Great Bend and that winner goes to Washington D.C....WOW that would be cool! (Get prepared K2!)

Hopefully J will want to do this next year and continue to excell. It's going to be an uphill battle for me to get him to at least try. Oh well!