Five spellers will represent Scottsdale Unified School District in the Arizona Region 2 Spelling Bee on Friday, Feb. 11, joining fellow champion spellers throughout the area at Paradise Valley High School auditorium, 3950 E. Bell Road.
Regional winners go on to the 2022 Arizona Spelling Bee, sponsored by the Arizona Educational Foundation, taking place 10 a.m. on Saturday, March 19, at the Madison Center for the Arts, 5601 N. 16th St., Phoenix. While the event is not open to the general public, each speller is allowed six guests with them.
From practicing at home to enduring practice rounds at local schools, students prepare to conquer the easiest and hardest spelling words.
SUSD held its 38-round Spelling Bee competition on Jan. 28 at Saguaro High School auditorium, 6250 N. 82nd St., in Scottsdale as 23 third through eighth grade spellers from the district went head-to-head.
The SUSD students were selected to compete at the event after winning their local school bees in December 2021. The event was held virtually the year before.
Meanwhile, the winning word for SUSD’s Bee was “tomtate,” which is the name of a family of fish found in waters off Florida and the West Indies.
Mohave Middle School seventh grader Arrow McGinty came in first place after 10 rounds with Cocopah Middle School eighth grader Isabel Helgemoe, who finished in third place.
McGinty won after 16 more rounds with Echo Canyon seventh-grader Leah Bailey who got second place. They spelled words such as “plutonomy,” “catechism,” “aciniform,” “noosphere” and “limuloid.”
“I like spelling words. I’ve started liking getting to know pronunciations and where they’re from,” said Ingleside sixth grader Rose Hunt, 12, who made it to the fifth round before being eliminated by the word “quantify.”
Her favorite word to spell is “incomprehensible,” Hunt said, adding she began practicing spelling words with her father, Robert Neal, back in the fall.
“It’s like thousands of words. I am nervous for her. It’s a super tough competition,” Neal said before the early-morning event.
Competitors were told to take deep breaths and congratulated for making it as far as they did and that they all were winners if they got that far.
“All the words can be found in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary,” said SUSD Director of Teaching and Learning Dr. Kim Dodds Keran, explaining the rigorous process students go through that includes pronouncing, spelling words, using them in sentences, knowing the etymology/origin of words, and more.
The program’s pronouncer, Shawn Watt, explained how he had to avoid showing facial expressions like smiling when giving spelling words to contestants so as not to show favoritism or let them know if they are right or wrong.
Apologizing in advance in case he would mispronounce a word by misapplying an accent, Watt encouraged students to tell him to use it in a sentence.
“I will be staring you down,” Watt said. “If you don’t hear a bell, just go back to your seat.”
Scottsdale students will likely meet up with winners from area schools including, the Peoria Unified School District Spelling Bee winner, Ethan Greenwood from Coyote Hills Elementary School, who won in the 12th round with the word “quinary,” on Thursday, Jan. 27.
Peoria school district will send its top seven spellers to compete in the Maricopa County Region’s Spelling Bee. Other winners preparing for the regional level match include Areli Ortega of Riverview School, who won the Dysart District Spelling Bee’s first place by correctly spelling the word “obsolete."
Students vie to win and proceed to the state-level, which is the Arizona Spelling Bee in March followed by the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. during the summer. The National Spelling Bee began in 1925 when nine newspapers joined together to host a spelling bee, according to reports.
Delarita Ford Lead Reporter | Surprise @AzNewsmedia
Meet Delarita Delarita Ford originally joined Independent Newspapers Incorporated, now Independent Newsmedia, Inc. USA in 1997, as a general assignment reporter for the Delaware State News daily paper after starting her journalism career in Maryland in 1994, where she honed her skills by writing obituaries, covering community news from births to deaths, education to legislation and more. As a reporter, she has had the opportunity to cover sitting and former U.S. presidential visits in Baltimore, Delaware, and Arizona.
Community: One of the few seasoned journalists who still enjoys covering community events, she can be found with a reporter’s pad taking notes, her phone taking pictures while capturing life’s moments to memorialize them in print for the local newspapers and for the active-adult community where she lives. She maintains a presence with the Black media and the National Association of Black Journalists to encourage peers, socialize, and mentor younger writers.
Education: Life learner who learns from life. Aside from the collegiate education received, she got the best training from on-the-job experience with former editors who went through copy with a red pen and demanded the best writing for hard news and feature stories.
Random Fact: While a Delaware State News reporter, she could call then Sen. Joe Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, usually late at night if a quote or input was needed for varying topics, including legislation and education.
Hobbies: Adopt rescue dogs and give them a nice home. Continuously read and critique news stories from various platforms.
By 
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here