26 Students Step Up to the Spelling Bee Challenge
C-O-U-R-A-G-E-O-U-S … an adjective meaning having or marked by courage: brave. Used in a sentence: The 26 third and fourth grade students pictured left are ALL courageous. They took the FWCD Scott Theater stage and participated in the Lower School Spelling Bee.
This year’s bee on April 3 was a record-setter: It went 26 rounds before the championship word – prompted – was spelled correctly in the final and 27th round. Dueling it out were fourth grade classmates Ledger Halpern and Van Nguyen. Nguyen was the champion; Halpern was runner-up. If those names sound familiar, it’s because they were No. 1 and 2 in last year’s Lower School Spelling Bee, but reversed: Halpern was the champion, and Nguyen was runner up.
This year, 60 students took a preliminary written spelling test, with 26 moving on to the live, in-person spelling bee. The study list students used was from the 2022 Scripps National Spelling Bee. Over the course of the 27 rounds, 231 words were given by the pronouncer, Kelly Lanier Tierce ’93, Director of Auxiliary Enrichment Programs. The 26 students tacked words such as speck, phone, sheesh, bobbed, growling, lousy, whizzed, bruise, python, squinched, benefited (benefitted), peevish, poppet, geopolitics, feisty, unacknowledged, exhilaration and more.
Rounds 11 through 18 were a battle of six, and in Round 20, only Halpern and Nguyen were left. In a twist, the final word in Round 23, moved the spellers into a new portion of the competition: The words moving forward would come from a different section of the list and were no longer part of the School Spelling Bee Study List. “The source for the remaining rounds will be Merriam-Webster's Unabridged,” Tierce said. “Although the next section of words might sound less difficult, you have not had the opportunity to study this list of words prior to today’s competition.”
In one of the final rounds, Halpern and Nguyen shook hands before proceeding in the competition. When awarding the boys their medals, Head of Lower School Trey Blair called the audience’s attention to that moment: “That moment right there, completely uncoached, that was just them. That’s the core values right there … that moment. That was everything we wanted, and I’m very, very proud of both of them.”
In addition to Halpern and Nguyen, Spelling Bee participants were:
James Bornitz ’33
Eric Chu ’33
JJ Condon ’33
Georgia Dean ’33
Isabella Garcia ’33
Grey Hansen ’32
McGwire Humble ’32
Miller Humble ’32
Rohan Jani ’33
Daniel Katat ’32
Charlie Klaus ’33
Brynn McCord ’32
Campbell McGuire ’33
Emily More ’32
Atticus Musoni ’33
Elle Ragan ’33
Ishana Samart ’32
Holt Sciuto ’33
Lucy Shaw ’33
Bruno Shields ’33
Emily Smith ’33
William Standish ’33
Whitney Walker ’33
Bailey Wells ’32
2024 marked the third year of the Lower School Spelling Bee. Fourth Grade Teacher Kelly Jenkins brought the idea to the School and sponsors it each year. Shannon Allen, Communications and Constituent Relations Manager; Chelsy Beninate, Assistant Head of School for Operations and Security and Director of Fine Arts; and Amy Witten, Assistant Head of School for Student Services and Academics, were judges.
