SANTA CRUZ—Young spellers from across the county descended upon UC Santa Cruz Jan. 25 to participate in this year’s county-wide spelling bee, organized by the Santa Cruz County Office of Education (SCCOE).
Students grades 4-9 took part in the competition in two separate divisions. Overseeing as “Spellmasters” were Mardi Browning of the Santa Cruz Sentinel and Michael McCawley, retired UCSC Admissions director.
According to Sofia Sorensen, Multilingual Coordinator of Educational Services at SCCOE, the difficulty of the spelling increased slightly this year. This led to no “perfect papers,” winners of the bee were those who had the fewest number of errors.
But some of the words spelled correctly were big accomplishments: “Fahrenheit,” “pneumonia” and “echelon,” were just a few of the challenging words.
In the Junior Division (grades 7-9), Evan Doane of Monte Vista Christian School placed first. Doane, a freshman in high school, will advance to the state spelling bee in Marin County in May, along with Ella Webb of Scotts Valley Middle School, who placed second.
Doane’s English Teacher, Jan Renard said she was incredibly proud.
“It was really difficult—some words even I had never heard,” Renard said. “But he did so well… he spelled 78 words total and only misspelled five.”
The format of the county competition has the word being said out loud, used in a sentence and then said again. Spellers have a mere 15 seconds to write down the word correctly and put their pencils down
“Evan knew he was doing well,” Renard said. “At the halfway break… he said he’d only missed two. And he just kept doing great.”
Linscott Charter School 6th grader Nga Lu placed third in the Elementary Division (grades 4-6) after correctly spelling “grandiloquence” during a “spell-off.” The regional competition is primarily a written competition, with spell-offs only occurring when there is a tie.
“She’s always been an avid reader and writer,” said Lu’s teacher, Seth Lewis. “And on top of that, she has a great sense of humor. I’m happy she did so well.”
Sage Kelly (New Brighton Middle School) and Vikram Sathish (Scotts Valley Middle School) placed first and second in the Elementary Division and will be representing Santa Cruz County at the California State Spelling Bee Championship.
Winners of the state competition will then advance to the national competition.
