Bee day arrives for region’s best spellers

By Harold Gwin

The winner of today’s bee will advance to national competition in May.

YOUNGSTOWN — It is a gathering of champions.

Not champions of the basketball court or the football field, but champions of the printed word.

And there are 68 of them coming together this morning in the Chestnut Room of Kilcawley Center at Youngstown State University to determine who is the best among them.

Each represents a local public, parochial, charter or home school in Mahoning and Trumbull counties and each has won their school spelling bee championship, giving them the right to appear in the 76th annual Vindicator Regional Spelling Bee at 9 a.m. today.

When the event begins, the contestants will file across the stage one-by-one as they are given an opportunity to spell a word correctly to advance to the next round.

The Chestnut Room will be filed with spellers and their family and other supporters, but, unlike an athletic contest, there won’t be a lot of cheering and shouting. Those attending the event are traditionally supportive of every child, listening intently and applauding each performance politely even when a word is missed.

The winner here advances to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., in May, with The Vindicator picking up the trip cost for the grand champion and one adult.

Most of the spellers — 54 to be exact — are in the Vindicator event for the first time, but several have competed at this level three times in the past and one is back for a fifth time.

Some will be nervous, but advice from repeat participants suggests contestants should try to relax and have fun — admittedly not an easy task when one has to stand in front of a room full of people and correctly spell very difficult and frequently unfamiliar words.

Although only one person can win the grand prize, everyone will go home a winner as all contestants will receive a Merriam-Webster 11th Edition Collegiate dictionary as well as a Vindicator Spelling Bee T-shirt, a school champion certificate and other mementos.

Spelling skills developed now will be beneficial to students throughout their lives. The bee is an educational program that gives students the opportunity to learn the spelling of words as well as their definitions, origins, parts of speech and how to use them in sentences.

gwin@vindy.com