Thursday, February 18, 2010

PLMS student wins county spelling bee

by Kenneth Lassiter  

It was a 53-round spelling slugfest, but in the end, a Perry Middle School student stood atop the rest as the winner of the 2010 Jefferson County Spelling Bee.

Twelve spellers converged on the multipurpose room at Oskaloosa schools Feb. 9 for the bee, and it was fitting that the word “attrition” was one of the words spelled correctly, as it took 20 rounds to whittle the field down to Amanda Jeter of Perry Middle School and Callie Rice of McLouth Middle School.

Two spellers went down in round two and three more joined them in round three. From there, five spellers dropped one at a time. “Impeccable” dropped one speller in round seven. Defending county champ Olivia Gaines of Oskaloosa Elementary School left an “f” out of “coffin” in round 10, which was confirmed by a review of the audio recording of the bee. “Meditate” felled another speller in round 13, and when Jefferson West Middle School student Samantha Montgomery slipped on “interim” in round 18, it was down to Jeter, Rice and George Gigstad of Jefferson County North Elementary School. Gigstad missed “authentic” in round 20 to leave only Jeter and Rice facing words from moderator Pam Jones.

The rounds stretched on as Jeter and Rice correctly spelled “hamartia,” “fascistic,” “phlebitis,” “officiant,” “rheumatic,” “ecclesiastical,” “tachycardia,” “montessorian,” “primogeniture,” “ichthyosaur,” “pantisocracy,” “glaucomatous,” and “deluginous,” among others. With the bee nearing the hour mark, Rice finally misspelled “intrigue” in round 51, but Jeter left the door open by misspelling “chromosome” to keep Rice’s title hopes alive. The miss on “intrigue” apparently rattled Rice, however, as she misspelled “mystical” in round 52. This time, Jeter capitalized on the mistake as she correctly spelled “exhibited” and “bilingual” for the bee title.

Both girls will move on to the Topeka regional bee, which is set for March 13 at Topeka West High School. Spellers from 26 counties will compete for the regional title, which will get that speller a berth in the national spelling bee in May in Washington, D.C.

Jeter and Rice, both of whom acknowledged extensive studying to prepare for what ended up a marathon spell-off, each received a $50 savings bond for their finish. The bonds were donated by the State Bank of Oskaloosa and the Bank of McLouth. It was Jeter’s first county bee and Rice’s second.