Ella England earns second place in Regional Spelling Bee

EAST WENATCHEE – On the evening of March 14, four students from the Lake Chelan Valley competed against top spellers in the 2018 NCW Regional Spelling Bee. Forty champion spellers from Chelan, Manson, Tonasket, Mansfield, Ephrata, Omak, Wenatchee, East Wenatchee, Moses Lake, Royal City, Cashmere, and Leavenworth competed for the opportunity to represent our region at the national Scripps Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., later this spring. Our local spellers included two sixth-grade spellers from the Chelan Middle School, Cray Silva and Charlie Morgan, and two sixth-grade spellers from Manson Middle School, Ella England and Ben Cullison.
Our local champions spoke with confidence and composure, despite the varied complexity of words in each round. The first two rounds were brutal. Among the 15 spellers eliminated in the first round, Cray misspelled hyphen by only one letter. Ben and Charlie were among the next 15 eliminated in the second round, with quesadilla being one of the multitude of misspelled food-related words that round. By the end of the third round, only the top three, including Ella England of Manson, remained. In round five, Kalea Macon (Foothills Middle School) misspelled boudoir, placing third in the region. The officials then moved from the first 300 words to the next, even more complicated collection.
 In the sixth round, Ella struggled with the silent H in apartheid, writing the word out on her arm as she had in each round. Ella asked for the definition and to have the word used in a sentence, applying all of her academic skill and etymological tools available, but to no avail. Ella earned second place as Kara Willson, of Tonasket Middle School, correctly spelled her round-six-word, peccadillo, and the championship word, recidivist, to earn first place. As an eighth-grade student, this was Kara’s fourth and final opportunity to compete in the NCW Regional Spelling Bee, and her victory and trip to the national competition were well-earned.
 Congratulations to all of our local spelling champions for their composure and sportsmanship among fierce academic competitors.