SPELLING RIGHT UNDER PRESSURE
Dan McGarity of Princess Gardens wins Rotary Senior Spelling Bee
Competitor Kathleen March of Summit Terrace is pumped after spelling a word under pressure during the annual Rotary Senior Spelling Bee Competition on Tuesday at Royal Gardens Retirement Residence.
Dan McGarity credited his 35 years of teaching for helping him to successfully defend his Rotary Club of Peterborough Senior Spelling Bee title on Tuesday.
“That helps,” he said with a laugh following an epic final which saw the Princess Gardens resident and runner-up Frida Little battle through spelling, or trying to spell, more than 40 words such as mirepoix, perihelion and speleologist.
McGarity won a brand new Colibri power scooter for his effort, which culminated with him successfully spelling the word avuncular.
“Pretty fancy. I’m really happy about this,” he said after trying out the vehicle for the first time immediately after being named grand champion in the atrium of Royal Gardens.
About 40 participants took part in the fourth event where some 21 local retirement homes and activity centres send their two top spellers, said Rotarian Rick Storey. He read out the words, defining and using them in a sentence, when asked.
Promoting literacy is a big part of Rotary’s efforts, so the annual spelling bees are a natural fit for the service club, Storey said. “It’s a community service event ... it’s just a fun thing for us to put on.” McGarity agreed. “It’s great fun, taking part in this. It really is. Everyone is so supportive in every way. It helps bring people together,” he said, adding it’s nice for seniors, who can feel isolated. “This is a tremendous thing that Rotary is doing. We’ve very lucky to have this in the community.”
It was the third year taking part in the bee for Little, who said, after the bee, that spelling was always her favourite subject in school.
Jokingly asked if she planned to brush up her skills in order to try to strip the title from McGarity next year, she smiled broadly. “I guess I’ll try.”
Rounds three and four included words from a Grade 7 and 8 reading level, while rounds five through the final rounds included words obtained from a 1901 textbook – McGarity won a framed copy of it as part of his victory.
As the final rounds between McGarity and Little continued, organizers eventually reverted to easier words from the earlier level.
The eventual winner frequently drew laughter from the audience as he asked for some of the words to be repeated, before he successfully repeated them himself – at one point repeating a word and admitting, “That’s difficult.”
To get to the final, McGarity successfully spelled words including prehensile, cytoplasm, rhubarb, unparalleled, impenetrable, neurosurgeon and skein.
In the final, where they had to spell two words in a row, he correctly spelled unanimous, klieg, lexicology, reverberated, draughts, pummelled, cirque, gabardine, sorghum, harlequin, millennium, pronunciation, demonstrable, statistician, abrogate and salutary, among others.
Judy Tompkins won third place in the bee, which was judged by Ray Saitz, Abiola Adeusi and Andi van Koeverden.
NOTES: The student spelling bee takes place Saturday at Fleming College’s Whetung Theatre, starting at 9 a.m. (older students compete at 1 p.m.) .... For more information, visit www. peterboroughrotary.ca.