To bee ... and to bee again

14 of the 39 competitors in this year’s NM Spelling Bee are returning to do battle once again

Fourteen of the 39 competitors in this year’s New Mexico Spelling Bee on Saturday may be experiencing a wee bit of déjà vu, or promnesia, as they’re feeling like they’ve been there before. Because they have. Those returning and, in fact, all competitors hail from dozens of small villages, medium towns and big cities around the Land of Enchantment. They will represent Lovington, Hobbs, Portales, Clovis, Fort Sumner, San Jon, Raton, Ilfield, Santa Fe, Los Alamos, Angel Fire, Chamisal, Española, Cochiti Pueblo, Bluewater Village, Farmington, Waterflow, Edgewood, Socorro, Belen, Los Lunas, Albuquerque, Rio Rancho, Gallup, Twin Lakes, Reserve and Lordsburg.

This year’s contestant pool breakdown includes 20 girls and 19 boys, mostly (13) from 7th grade, but one or more from 4th through 8th grades, ages 9 through 14, with the overwhelming majority from public schools (33), but also some from private and charter schools.

To get to the championship, there were some challenging winning words from the district and regional contests, including: precipice, pterodactyl, geodesic, au revoir, ascetic, scoria, walla, fatuous, egalitarian, Huguenot and ebullience, along with some easier ones, such as hurricane, jalapeño, chalupa and cavity.

Student aspirations as outlined in their applications include wanting to be a major spelling bee winner, video game designer, NBA and WNBA player, pediatrician, scientist, computer scientist, pianist, “to win a lot of trophies in a row,” forestry officer, opthalmologist, chemist, engineer, writer, neurosurgeon, biologist, teacher, veterinarian, marine biologist and culinary artist.

They are competing for a variety of prizes, including the Championship trophy and the trip to Washington, D.C., to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, MerriamWebster dictionaries, medals, Encyclopaedia Britannica and gift cards.

A vocabulary component will again be added to the bee to align with the national bee. Vocabulary is not required to be incorporated into spelling bees on all levels in New Mexico.

For more information, contact Karen Kehe, N.M. Spelling Bee Coordinator, by email at kkehe@ abqpubco.com or by phone at 505-2492724. For more information about the Scripps National Spelling Bee, email www.spellingbee.com/contact or call 513-977-3977.

JIM THOMPSON/JOURNAL In a qualifying competition for the New Mexico Spelling Bee, Jolene Cole-Holpp from Bellehaven Elementary takes her turn this past January in the first round of the APS Spelling Bee held at Cibola High School.

JIM THOMPSON/JOURNAL Garrick Tam from Hawthorne Elementary spells out “geodesic” to win in the championship round of the APS Spelling Bee held at Cibola High School in January, landing him a spot in the New Mexico Spelling Bee this Saturday.

MARLA BROSE/JOURNAL In this photo from last year’s New Mexico Spelling Bee, TaSheena Thompson, a 6th-grader from Uplift Community School in Gallup, listens to other spellers during the competition at Sandia Prep. She is one of the 14 top spellers from around the state to...