Bee brave, you stellar spellers
SO, HOW was 10-year-old Jahira Davis feeling about her round Tuesday at the Daily News Annual Spelling Bee? N-E-R-V-O-U-S. “She wasn’t nervous until she got off the train,” Lois Davis said of her daughter, a student at Public School 705 Brooklyn Arts and Science in Crown Heights.
“Every day when we get in the car and drive to school, we go over words. I transfer them to index cards.”
Jaden Lugo, 11, who goes to Martin Luther School, was feeling the same way. Luckily, no one asked him to spell “stomach” or “butterflies.”
“It’s just my first time being in a citywide spelling bee,” Jaden said. “There’s a lot more people than I thought there would be. I don’t know what’s going to happen at this point. I didn’t think the spelling bee would be in the Daily News.”
For 54 years, New York’s Hometown Paper has sponsored the spelling spectacular that this year drew 71 students from all five boroughs to compete for the honor of being the best at reciting rarely-used words one letter at a time.
Neel Iyer, an eighth-grader from East Side Middle School in Manhattan, was the superior speller, taking home the top prize by spelling “rheology” — the study of the deformation and flow of matter.
He and runnerup Henrik Behrent will head to the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee in Washington in May.
Among those excited about the contest at Manhattan’s Food and Finance High School was Department of Education budget director Richard Grzelewski, who is used to having to spell his name.
As the spelling bee’s official pronouncer (yes, there is such a thing), he has to study even harder than the students.
“I just have a knack for pronouncing these words,” said Grzelewski. That’s G-R-Z-E-L-E-W-S-K-I.
“I don’t get to see kids all the time for my day-to-day job, so this is especially fulfilling for me because I get to see the kids.”
When the bee began, the students got focused. They were asked to spell words like “wikiwiki,” “sitzmark,” “paddock” and “chipotle” — and that was just the practice and opening rounds.
Spanish food was a theme through the first two rounds, with students spelling “enchilada,” “empanada,” “chalupa,” “quesadilla,” “tortilla,” “mole” and “chimichanga.”
All this before the students had L-UN-C-H.
Eventually, the crowd began to thin. By Round 8, there were fewer than 15 students remaining, including the brother-sister pair of Demetra and George Chudley.
Demetra, a sixth-grader, was ousted on “hanoverian,” while George, an eighth grader, fell in the same round on “rheumatologist.” “That’s really just a stroke of luck, honestly,” George said of being the only siblings in the tournament.
The spelling bee is also sponsored by the Princeton Review and P.C. Richard & Son.