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Vindy speller misses the cut
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Spelling Bee winner
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Lauren Ritz of Willow Creek earning Center is the 2011 Vindicator Spelling Bee champ.
7th-grader sets her sights on 2012 DC bee
YOUNGSTOWN
While “a little bit disappointed” that she won’t be competing in today’s Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee championship, Lauren Ritz of New Castle, Pa., says she’s working to return next year.
“The whole experience has been amazing,” Lauren said Wednesday from Washington, D.C.
Lauren, 13, is a seventh-grader at Willow Creek Learning Center in Poland.
Lauren won The Vindicator’s 78th annual Regional Spelling Bee in March. That qualified her to join 274 other regional champions, ages 8 to 15, at the national bee in D.C.
“I was a little bit nervous, but it was a great experience,” she said.
Only 41 of the participants will compete in today’s semifinals. Those who survive the semifinals will compete this evening in the 84th annual national championship.
The contestants took a 25-word written test Tuesday. Lauren spelled 20 of them correctly. The written test score was combined with two rounds in which each contestant had to spell words correctly at a microphone.
That process reduced the field from 275 to 41.
In the first round at the microphone, Lauren misspelled licentiate — meaning a person who has a license granted especially by a university to practice a profession, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary — by using a “y” instead of the word’s first “i.”
“I had not heard” that word before, she said.
She rebounded in the second round, correctly spelling batik, which is a fabric printed by an Indonesian method of hand-printing textiles by coating with wax the parts not to be dyed, according to Merriam- Webster.
Lauren went to D.C. with her parents, Stephen and Lisa, and her 11-year-old brother Alex.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” her father said. “It’s great. We’ve never been part of something this big. It’s an academic sporting event.”
The Ritzes are staying in Washington, D.C., until Saturday and will be in the audience for today’s semifinals and championship.