Washington 5th-grader wins county spelling bee
The Union County Spelling Bee was held on Friday, and a fifth-grader at Washington Middle School b-e-a-t, beat out the competition to advance to the state bee.
Alex Flowers was the first-place winner in Friday’s bee, followed by Strong-Huttig eighth-grader JaNaira Hamilton in second-place and WMS fifth-grader Kaden Hetrick in thirdplace.
Flowers’ winning word was “cottonwood,” said Melissa Upchurch, the county spelling bee coordinator.
“This was the first spelling bee since COVID,” Upchurch said. “It went to 10 rounds.”
Nine spellers, including five from WMS and four from Strong, competed in this year’s bee. Preparation for the bee began in August with the school year.
“We started preparing our students when school started back in August,” Upchurch said. “We had the classroom spelling bees before Christmas, then the school spelling bee right after we came back in January.”
Students used study guides provided by Scripps, the company that sponsors the bee, to prepare for their local bees.
“On their website, they provide lists we can use as study guides,” Upchurch said. “I provided the list to our teachers, who gave it to our students to study. Once the classroom and school spelling bees were over, there was another study list they gave.”
On March 11, Flowers will head to Little Rock to compete in the state spelling bee at the Arkansas 4-H Center.
According to the Electric Co-Op of Arkansas, which is sponsoring the state bee, approximately 84,350 students at 422 schools across 55 counties in Arkansas competed in school and county-level spelling bees for the chance to compete at the state level.
At the state-level, students must use the Merriam-Webster unabridged dictionary to study.
The 2023 Scripps National Spelling Bee will be held at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland on May 1.
Other students who competed in the Union County Spelling Bee last week were sixth-graders Robert Aguiluz, Eriyanna Malone and Zariah Miller, all from WMS; and eighth-grader Dexton Howard, fifth-grader Sariyah Pickett and sixth-grader Annie Cooper, from Strong.
“We had a great time. I really appreciate the students and their desire
and willingness to participate,” Upchurch said.
Kimberly Thomas, superintendent of Strong-Huttig School District, said she was proud of Strong’s students who competed, noting that JaNaira, the second-place winner of the bee, is a STAR Academy Ambassador and is always on the Honor Roll.
“We at Strong-Huttig School District are very proud of our students that represented at the Union County Spelling Bee and encourage them all to continue setting high academic goals. We would like to extend well wishes and congratulations to the student that will represent the county at the State Spelling Bee later this Spring,” Thomas said in an email.
Current Strong seventh-grader Cameron Thomas represented Union County at the 2022 State Spelling Bee.
Hopefully next year’s bee will have more c-o-m-p-et-i-t-o-r-s, competitors, Upchurch said.
“I do hope we have some more students that will come out next year,” she said.