Crane student takes spelling bee title

Zarrin Askari knows her herbs and her verbs.

The Crane Middle School eighthgrader took the title for the 72nd annual Yuma County Spelling Bee with the correct letterings for “basil” and “streaming.”

Askari topped 52 other contestants in nine rounds before the Arizona Educational Foundation’s “Rule 12” went into effect. The AEF rules typically mirror those of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, of which schools must be a member to participate in the county bee.

Rule 12, which applies when two contestants remain, states that if a word is misspelled, the word must be corrected by the next contestant and, in order to be declared the winner, must correctly spell the following word from the pronouncer’s list.

Eleven contestants were eliminated in the first round, which saw words such as “curricula” and “tragic.” In Round 2, 13 students made their way to their parents in the audience with words such as “prattle,” “crochet,” and “cosmos.”

The difficulty of the words seemed to ebb and flow, said Marjorie McCarthy, Askari’s English Language Arts teacher at Crane.

Two sisters were competing in this year’s competition — Samantha and Hailey Chulamorkodt. Samantha was representing Gowan Science Academy while Hailey was competing for Woodard Junior High

School. Hailey has placed in the top 10 in the county spelling bee in 2015, 2016 and 2017. This year the sisters were sixth and fourth.

Askari is no stranger to the spelling competition either, said her father, Dr. Hassan Askari.

“Always since fourth grade, she was in top 15,” he said. “And seventh grade last year she came seventh place.”

Askari also placed high enough in the MathCOUNTS competition to represent Yuma County at that state contest, which is also the same day as the state spelling bee, March 24. But spelling is more important, Zarrin said, so she will compete in that.

When asked how she felt about winning Tuesday, she said “I’m so proud of myself. I studied a lot, practicing every day.”

Zarrin’s strategy (which was one of the days words) included using dictionary. com, an online source.

“I look at the word and then I’ll put it in on dictionary.com and it’ll give me the pronunciation and definitions and sentences that they might use,” she explained. “And it’s just a lot of writing the words over and over again, just to cement it in my brain.”

Major sponsors of the event included Arizona Western College and the Yuma County Superintendent of Schools office.