Lincoln County’s Spelling Champions faced-off Feb. 9 at Great Salt Bay School for the Annual Spelling Bee.
The Lincoln County Spelling Bee is the field of battle upon which students are pitted against the eccentric stallion that is the English language.
Even with all the teaching tools available to harness and tame it usage dictionaries, manuals of style, thesauruses) it still manages to buck us off and run wild. It never seems as though there’s full control over all the eccentricities of our native tongue.
The three teacher/judges, Nancy Durgin (Medomak Middle School), Anne Tibbetts and John Cannon (Great Salt Bay) were responsible to uphold the rules of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. The determination of correct spelling and compliance fell to them.
The pronouncer, Elizabeth Norton (Great Salt Bay) hosted the event. It was her task to say each word clearly, offer definitions and moderate the evening.
Fifteen students approached the microphone, each in their own style. Some stood with confidence and ease while others twirled their shirt tails nervously. The youngest competitor, Annalisa Paulsen from Bristol, skipped up to the mic.
They took turns trying to pluck a spoken word out of the air and make it tangible by selecting from the twenty-six letters in our language and arranging them in a precise order. They drew them in the air, ticked off letters on their fingers or closed their eyes. It was all to conquer their word, to unlock its secret and step grandly upon its slain form in victory.
After six rounds of competition, Jackson Vail (Medomak Middle School) won the 2011 Lincoln County Spelling Bee, spelling “quotient”. Vail’s love of language and rich reservoir of vocabulary was evident in his relaxed demeanor and unhesitating attack on his assigned words.
Mary Reid, a sixth grader from the Edgecomb Eddy School, was runner-up after a face-off between the two leaders. In the event that Vail should be unable to compete at the State level for any reason, Reid would step in to represent Lincoln County.
Now Vail will prepare for his next test. The Maine State Spelling Bee will be held at USM in Portland on March 19th.The Maine winner will face off with spellers from across the nation in the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., on June 1, 2011.
A logophile, who genuinely likes learning new words, Vail is sure to be a strong contender for State Champion.
