In this year’s Southwestern Regional Spelling Bee competition, smorgasbord was just one of the words students needed to learn how to spell. Sixty seventh grade spellers competed in the Kanab Middle School (KMS) Spelling Bee.
On Friday, March 7, eight champions spelled for the opportunity to represent KMS at the regional bee in Cedar City on Tuesday, March 25.
The eight spellers included: Easton Broadhead, Houston Brown, Robert Capson, Angela Darger, Aspen Glazier, Miri Mee, Ruby Schmutz and Tyson Veator.
In front of an audience of their peers with Sadie Christensen and Lizzy Rhodes keeping track of the competition word by word, the classroom was silent as each speller repeated their assigned word and then spelled.
After getting out, Angela Darger explained, “I missed the word ‘territory.’” Even though she was eliminated from the competition after missing the word, she said, “It was really fun. It was fun seeing the other spellers spell.”
When asked about how she prepared for the competition, Aspen Glazier shared, “My little sister Navy helped me study. She would play the pronouncer and I would spell.” Aspen expressed gratitude for her sister’s help.
When asked about what she liked about the Spelling Bee, Aspen said, “It brought out my competitive spirit intellectually instead of physically.”
Having drilled with his friends, Easton was ready to spell. He explained, “I got out on the word ‘basilica.’ I know how to spell it, but I was going too fast.”
To prepare for the competition, baseball player Tyson Veater said, “I’d open the list on my computer and look at it. I blocked out other distractions.” In the end, he shared, “I misspelled ‘generosity’ because I wasn’t focused. I wasn’t locked in enough.”
Generosity is a challenging word because generous ends in “ous.” It is difficult to remember to leave out the “u” when spelling generosity.
Best friends Houston Brown and Robert Capson drilled each other for weeks leading up to the Spelling Bee.
Robert explained, “I like spelling. It’s fun to do it in front of people.”
Like Robert, Houston thinks “it’s fun.” When thinking about the word he misspelled, Houston noted, “I missed ‘revelation’ because I replaced the second ‘e’ [with] an ‘a.’”
The second runner-up, Miri Mee noted, “I missed ‘obelisk.’ I doubted myself.” To prepare, Miri said, “I had someone quiz me through all the words on the back, the eighth-grade words.”
After Miri misspelled “obelisk,” Ruby Schmutz spelled it correctly and earned the title of KMS Queen Bee. New to Kanab this year, Ruby shared, “It feels good to win. Being kinda’ new, it’s like ‘yay.’”
Ruby spent a lot of time studying. She explained, “I asked my mom to tell me all of the words. If I was iffy on them, I underlined them. Then, my mom would highlight the ones I couldn’t get. When we first started spelling, I couldn’t spell in my head, but with practice I memorized them, so they rolled when I was in the bee.”
KMS will be cheering Ruby Schmutz on when she represents Kane County School District, along with two spellers from Kanab Elementary School, on March 25, in Cedar City, Utah.
