Fourth-Grader Crowned Spelling Bee Champ

In Round 22, Georgia Dean ’33 was crowned the 2025 Lower School Spelling Bee Champion; Elle Ragan ’33 was the Runner-Up. The winning word: gargoyles. 

This year, 60 students took a preliminary written spelling test in January, with 27 moving on to the in-person spelling bee on the FWCD Scott Theater stage. (One student was sick for the February 27 competition.) For the past several weeks, students studied words from the 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee Competition List. Over the course of the 22 rounds, students took on such words as crisp, world, please, frosty, mushy, sign, grins, video, jazzy, field, loose, fuel, whee, recess, powwow and more. 

In addition to Dean and Ragan, Spelling Bee participants were third graders Olivia Bavin, Rhodie Blair, Monroe Brezina, Alexander Green, Claire Hall, Samantha Herman, Mira Kelso, Sam More, Bunyada Song, Talya Taflan, Lee Bradley Thornton-Sikes, Ava Venturini, and fourth graders James Bornitz, Davidson Boenker, Eric Chu, Declan Cumming, Bella Garcia, Rohan Jani, Charlie Klaus, Atticus Musoni, Lucy Shaw, Bruno Shields, William Standish, Whitney Walker, Quinn Wallace.