Vindicator Bee champ down on 'neurasthenic' today at national Bee

Staff/wire report

WASHINGTON

A West Branch student took an early exit in the preliminary section of the 90th Scripps National Spelling Bee in the nation’s capital.

Macey Stancato, winner of The Vindicator’s 84th Regional Spelling Bee, was eliminated Wednesday after incorrectly spelling the word “neurasthenic.”

Neurasthenic is defined as a person suffering from neurasthenia, which is nervous exhaustion.

The national bee weeded out the field to the truly elite spellers during Wednesday’s grueling preliminary rounds. Macey qualified for the national competition after correctly spelling “sarcoidosis,” which is “a chronic disease of unknown cause characterized by the formation of nodules resembling true tuberculosis lesions on the lymph nodes, lungs, bones, skin and other organs,” at The Vindicator’s bee in March.

She beat out 44 other competitors.

Meanwhile, 6-year-old Edith Fuller of Tulsa, Okla., had to spell words just as difficult as those everyone else faced in the national bee. But she received one accommodation to her tender age. When her group of spellers took the stage, Edith was conspicuously absent, her seat empty. Her parents got permission from Scripps to let Edith spend some of her time offstage while waiting to spell.

“A 6-year-old, sitting in one place, not interacting with anybody, for two hours is the equivalent of torture,” said her father, Justin Fuller.

Read more about the bee in Thursday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.