Winners’ gifts

Winners’ gifts

As grand champion of The Vindicator‘s 78th Regional Spelling Bee, Lauren Ritz will receive an expense-paid trip (including hotel, travel accommodations, tours, meals and incidental expenses) to Washington, D.C., for her and a parent during the 84th Scripps National Spelling Bee Week, May 29-June 4. The trip is underwritten by The Vindicator.

The prize also includes a first- place trophy from The Vindicator and a grand-champion certificate; a $100 U.S. savings bond from the Rotary Club of Youngstown; a $150 Barnes and Noble gift card from the downtown Kiwanis Club; “These Hundred Years — a Chronicle of the Twentieth Century”; the Samuel Louis Sugarman Award; Webster’s Third New International Dictionary from Merriam-Webster; a one-year subscription for Britannica Online Student Edition from Encyclopedia Britannica; a floral arrangement from Burkland Flowers of Youngstown; and two ticket vouchers to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

The runner-up and third-place winner also receive trophies, certificates, gift cards, books, dictionaries and online subscriptions.

Young competitors

This year’s competition included two young players. Bronx Teague is in first grade at Akiva Academy, and Ian Chovan is a second-grader at Montessori School-Mahoning Valley. Both boys made it to the second round of the spelling contest.

The numbers

The bee included 68 participants — 33 boys and 35 girls. Of those competitors, 62 competed in the event for the first time; three spellers participated for the second time, and three spellers were returning for at least their third try.

Volunteers

Fred Owens, a professor in the communication and theatre department at Youngstown State University, served as pronouncer for the bee, a post he has filled for several years.

Judges were the Rev. Dr. Lewis Macklin of Holy Trinity Missionary Baptist Church; Leslie Kiske, a retired educator from the Boardman School District and a teacher of Adult Basic Education at The English Center; and Margie Rodriguez, a counselor at East High School.

One replacement

Joan Reardon, a seventh-grader at St. Charles School in Boardman, filled in at the bee after both her school’s winner and the alternate were ill and couldn’t attend.