Chattanooga: Buzzing through the Bee

“Bronchospasm” and “quadrivial” are just two examples of the challenging words spellers faced in the 2009 Regional Spelling Bee, which was held at the UTC Fine Arts Building on Saturday afternoon.

Over 80 kids, ranging from 4th grade to 8th, took part in the competition, but, as always, only one winner was left standing.

“My parents have really helped me prepare, and I’m kind of like astonished,” said Tanay Patri, a fifth-grader at Hickory Valley Christian School and the winner of Saturday’s Regional Spelling Bee. “I’m really happy, but I can’t believe it happened to me.”

In round 15, only spellers Mr. Patri and Kendra Benn were left standing. After Miss Benn misspelled her word, Mr. Patri correctly spelled, “Impetigo,” thus winning the title of the 2009 Regional Spelling Bee Champion.

Trophies also went to the competition’s four runners-up.

“For them to have gotten here, this was huge,” said Garry Grimes, head of Newspapers in Education with the Times Free Press. “These kids, they’ll come off stage and say, ‘I knew (the word) had two ‘m’s’ to it,’ or, ‘I knew it has two ‘i’s.’ And you feel sorry for them because they’ve worked so hard. They’ve studied hundreds and thousands of words to have this opportunity.”

According to Mr. Grimes, the competition has drawn winning spellers from 14 counties in North Georgia and Southeast Tennessee.

“Some of the kids are repeats, and they’re the kids that aren’t flustered,” he said. “They get up and they know what to ask. They’re confident because they’ve been here before.”

When faced with a new word, spellers had the option of asking the pronouncer to explain the word’s origin, definition, what part of speech it is and how it’s used in a sentence.

“The kids will have to know fundamental rules (like) phonics and origins,” Mr. Grimes said. “They need to know the language of origin, and that helps them out quite a bit when they know these things.”

Ada Robinson, a retired educator and judge for the competition, said she was very surprised by each participant’s knowledge.

“Some of the words, I probably couldn’t pronounce them myself,” she said.

In a matter of weeks, Mr. Patri’s will be on stage at our nation’s capitol.

“The winner of this gets the word almost,” Mr. Grimes said. “We send them and a parent to Washington, D.C., for the National Spelling Bee, which will be at the end of May. And there they will compete against kids from across the nation and (territories) of the U.S., like Guam and Puerto Rico.”

Mr. Patri will also receive $500 spending money, $100 saving bond and a Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary to help him study.