Bonaire ES student wins System Spelling Bee

No. 1 is … well, No. 1 is No. 1.

That’s the number assigned Bonaire Elementary School’s Rebecca Kenny, and that’s the place Kenny finished in the Houston County Board of Education’s 2014 System Spelling Bee held Friday at the Eric P. Staples Building in Perry.

Kenny earned first place by first spelling correctly the word missed by runner-up Keerti Soundappan, a Mossy Creek Middle School student. That word was “pitchblende,” which Soundappan had right, right up until the end. She left the “e” off of it. Kenny then spelled the word “alcohol” (rules unique to the finals required her to not only spell the missed word by her opponent but also the word following) for the win.

Leading up to that point, the two had gone back and forth nine times – nine separate words for each. Along the way they sailed through words like “cacao,” “harpsichord,” “sallow” and “abdicate.”

It also took 10 rounds for the competition to get down to where they were. The field started with 28. They represented the elementary and middle schools. The first round proved to be the most brutal. Twelve fell. Words that proved difficult were “stethoscope,” “prescription,” “mosque” and “boodle,” among others.

Eight of those first 12 were just to Kenny’s left. She liked that. “It made me excited,” she said. “To see that many go out so quickly helped boost my confidence.”

Five more fell in Round 2 – to words like “retrospective,” “curriculum” and “worrisome.”

Round 3 claimed three more; “innate” and “ambiguity” got two. The eight remaining got past Round 4, but Round 5 – “karate,” “collage” and “animosity” claiming victims – cut it to five.

One of those, Michael Tinsley from Thomson Middle School, went out in Round 6. Phoebe Guidry from Perry Middle School was eliminated in Round 8, and finally Nicole Tayag from Bonaire Middle School, who was assigned No. 2, which meant she was next to Kenny all the way, fell on the word “manteau.”

“It feels really good,” Kenny said of the win. She, the third-place finisher last year, will now represent the county at the region competition on March 1.

And by the way, while most of the kids might have been out playing in the snow this past week, not Kenny. “I studied a lot (during that time),” she said. “It helped.”

And you spell that “s-m-a-r-t!”

HHJ News