‘S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E’
Active in and out of school, 7th-grade wordsmith had limited time to study. So, naturally, her win came as a complete ...
Adyson Gifford was as surprised as anyone Sunday when she won the 2024 Macomb County Regional Spelling Bee.
Adyson, a seventh-grader at Wyandot Middle School in Clinton Township, slowly recited, “T-O-U-T-E-D,” to capture the annual championship and win the chance to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee late this spring near Washington, D.C.
Adyson appeared to be in shock in the moments afterward as claps and cheers filled the room, and she embraced family members.
“I’m so surprised,” she said. “I felt like I didn’t study enough. I studied a little bit. I would’ve studied more but I had basketball” after school.
She attributed her win to the luck of getting words she knew.
“Sometimes you get easy words, and sometimes you get hard words,” she said, adding the most difficult word was the winning word.
“I didn’t know the word, I didn’t know what it meant,”
she said.
She added the rest of the bee was a blur.
Thirty-eight students in grades five through eight participated at the Macomb Intermediate School District building on Garfield Road in Clinton Township. Parents, siblings and others joined the crowd of over 250.
MISD Superintendent Michael DeVault “touted” the value of the event for students and families in the county. The MISD took over sponsoring the event several years ago after The Macomb Daily staged it for over 15 years.
“We continue to see strong support and interest from our parents and students,” DeVault said. “We are delighted to host this event. It’s another example of opportunities for our students to grow, experience competition and learn.”
Five of the final six competitors who advanced were girls.
This year’s competition was relatively short as it went only nine rounds, with Anjali Seth, an eighth-grader at St. Thecla School in Clinton Township, finishing as the runner-up. After correctly