Runner-up prepares to tackle new bee
By Denise Dick
new castle
Last year’s runner-up in the Vindicator spelling bee competition returns this year ready to spell again.
Lauren Ritz, 13, of New Castle, won her school’s bee again this year to return to the Vindicator event planned for 9 a.m. March 19 in the Chestnut Room at Kilcawley Center at Youngstown State University.
She’s ready for her second appearance.
“I’ve just been studying the words off the list,” Lauren said.
The Spell It list is provided by the Scripps National Spelling Bee and Merriam-Webster. It includes 1,150 words, provided on a website and organized by language of origin. It includes words such as colloquial and triumvirate from Latin and sevruga and babushka from Slavic languages.
The seventh-grader at Willow Creek Learning Center in Poland misspelled sachem at last year’s event. It’s a word for the chief of a North American Indian tribe and it’s forever imprinted in her memory now.
The Vindicator’s 78th Regional Spelling Bee is a qualifier for the Scripps event in May in Washington, D.C.
Lauren, the daughter of Lisa and Stephen Ritz, has been preparing for the upcoming fete by having her mother quiz her on words.
“She asks me a word and I spell it,” Lauren said.
That usually happens on the drive to school in the morning, she said, and it started about a month ago, after Lauren won her school’s event.
When she hears a word, Lauren just pictures it in her head, but it doesn’t really come naturally to her.
“I practice,” Lauren said.
Lisa Ritz said her daughter is an avid and voracious reader and she attributes her daughter’s spelling prowess to that.
“She actually works with her teacher at school, too,” Lisa Ritz said. The teacher “works with whoever wins the school spelling bee. It’s about an hour a week.”
Lauren has started this year to study the origins and roots of words, her mother said.
When Lauren isn’t practicing spelling words or doing homework, she enjoys figure skating, playing guitar and tennis.
She figure-skates at the Ice Zone in Boardman and at Hess Ice Rink in New Castle and travels all over for competitions. She started skating when she was 6.