KIRTLAND — Three spelling “all stars,” including Grand Valley’s Katie Paskey, went nine rounds at the 2010 Tri-County Spelling Bee at Kirtland Public Library Thursday morning before a winner emerged.
Kirsten Prout, a home-schooled seventh grader from Middlefield, won the title of Area V champion, and will head to the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.
Katie was runner up in the contest, was stumped in the ninth round by the word “mootable,” an adjective that means “debatable” and sounds like “moodable” when pronounced.
The runner up had little to say after the contest, other than she’d prepared for the bee by studying words from the Merriam-Webster Spell It list, which can be downloaded from the myspellit.com Web site.
While the spelling bee used words from that list, the pronouncer also delved into the Extra Word List, sent out by the spelling bee’s national office. The list, for use at regional bees, is not available to the students for advance study.
Katie correctly spelled words like “temporal,” “Permian, “sitzmark,” “pitchblende” and “circumspectly” as she advanced against Kirsten Prout and Kelly Tapager, an eighth-grade student at the Andrews-Osborne Academy.
In one early round, all three girls missed their words, which revived Katie’s hope for a win.
After tripping over “mootable,” Katie took her seat and Kristen went on to win the round and the next word, “mantilla,” a light scarf worn over the head and shoulders by Spanish and Latin-American women.
Katie, who was supported at the event by her parents, grandparents and principal, received a trophy, one-year subscription to Encyclopedia Britannica online and an Amazon.com gift card.
Steve Young, Lake County Educational Service Center director, told the spellers and their parents, grandparents and friends who came out to support them that they were all “winners” and the district spelling bee was like an “all-star game.”
“Our purpose here is to honor and further showcase these three champions,” Young said. “We’re further recognizing and honoring them for their accomplishments.”
This was Katie’s second trip to the district competition; she also represented Ashtabula County as a fifth-grade student. She is the only Grand Valley student to advance to the district level.
The bee was sponsored by the News Herald and the Lake, Geauga and Ashtabula County Educational Service Centers.
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Grand Valley girl runner-up in district’s spelling bee
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