A packed set of bleachers of supportive family and friends eagerly watched as 42 of Tri-Valley’s best spellers from the fourth through eighth grades competed at the 2019 District Spelling Bee. Tri-Valley’s Middle School gymnasium was the venue for the event Wednesday evening, January 23rd.
Each of the four elementary schools held a spelling bee prior to the winter break with qualifying contestants battling it out for at least a top six to ten placement (depending on the school) in order to move on to the main event.
The building winners from the elementary schools were Ingrid Dittmar from Adamsville, Ava Hamilton from Dresden, Owen Harney from Frazeysburg, and Gwyn Dal Ponte from Nashport. Eva Dittmar was the Tri-Valley Middle School winner.
The following students also progressed to the District Bee: Kaylee Palmer, Leah Wofter, Tristan Crawford, Leah Curry and Caiden Hogue from Adamsville Elementary, Jake Harvey, Gavin Spiker, Wesley Dilts, Ayden Greiner, Alonna Hendershott, Colin Horton, Charity Clark, Katelyn Dotson and Austin Lynn from Dresden Elementary, Emily Shoop, Marley Miller, Felicity Grable, Kaylynn Reffitt, and Lillian Adams from Frazeysburg Elementary, Oliver Baker, Ben Beebe, Yuvi Bastola, Jamie Bright, Kelsie Smith, Danny Jiang, Emme Cunningham, Nina McIntire, and Eric Timm from Nashport Elementary as well as these students from the middle school Alvia Sims, Erik Neal, Julia Cetrone, Jenna Wilson, Anna Pitcock, Arpen Parekh, Emma Ivey, Zoe Harney and Elijah Murphy.
Preparing for the District Bee was no easy feat. Students had a list of 375 words to study including several columns of advanced words like Auf Wiedersehen, juxtapose, felicitously, and Xanadu. On a side note, this week’s word scramble on page seven in the printed edition of the February 1st Dresden Buzz will feature 20 words from the list.
Pronouncer, Judge Eric Martin read from a list of pre-selected words of varying difficulty to the students. Each student who approached the microphone was allowed to ask for the word to be repeated, request a definition, for the word to be used in a sentence and the origin of the word. Rules from the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee were followed.
Even under pressure all of the Tri-Valley participants did an outstanding job. The competition was so close that the Bee lasted for at least an hour and a half with several rounds passing with no eliminations at all.
Eva Dittmar the building winner from Tri-Valley Middle School won with the runner up being Oliver Baker from Nashport Elementary. Each of them received a trophy and a Century National Bank savings account with a monetary donation already alotted from Scott Lamonica of Century National Bank, a sponsor of the event.
Congratulations to all of the District Bee participants and those who competed at the building level, you should all be very proud of yourselves.
