Tulare County Spelling Bee

Yesterday our girls participated in the Tulare County Spelling Bee Championship at the Visalia Convention Center. There were 212 students competing and about 500-600 spectators. The students were called individually to the microphone to spell a word orally in front of the crowd. Kaitlyn was the 125th student to compete and Sarana was the 190th. The competition goes in “rounds” where all students have to spell a word individually before they can proceed to the next round and if they do not spell it correctly they are eliminated.
Sarana was eliminated during the 3rd round on the word vogue. She placed 63 out of 207. The frustrating part was that she knew the word and immediately caught her mistake when she put the u in front of the g. However, for the sake of time students cannot back and fix the word. Sarana’s other words that she spelled correctly were kidney and forsythia.
Kaitlyn was eliminated during the 5th round. Prior to being eliminated she correctly spelled jewel, filibuster, linseed, and molè. Kaitlyn was finally eliminated on the word roodebok. After researching it when we got home we discovered the origin of the word is Dutch, a synonym for the word is pallah, and it is the official name for a South African antelope. Sure, we all knew that! Kaitlyn actually claimed 16th place. 4th grade is the first year students can compete and she was 16 out of 207! If you’d like to try some of the words that students were given today try: voortrekker, muishond, schadenfruede, pfeffernuss, pickelhaube, gesundheit, philhellenism, or hoomalimali. Can you see why students have studied for months and parents get ulcers?
Anyway, as you can see we are very proud of our daughters and their efforts on becoming better spellers. I know in the process Steve and I certainly learned some new words as well. I am almost thankful the girls were eliminated since I was not sure how much more suspense Steve and my mom could have taken! Steve says he would rather preach General Conference than sit through watching our daughters do that again. Although, Kaitlyn has her sights on winning county next year and moving on to the National Spelling Bee in Washington , D.C. so Steve might just have to suffer some more.