County spellers prepare for annual bee

The buzz about the County Spelling Bee is getting around, and Sanders County schools have announced their lineup of students slated to compete. The county’s spelling tradition will take place Friday, March 2 at 1 p.m. in the Sanders County Courthouse. Surrounded by Montana’s legal tomes, participants will do their best to get spellings correct from a list of words provided by the national-level organization.

Once in the hot seat, students can ask for clarification on a challenging word. A request for a repeat of the pronunciation, definition and use in a sentence are the tools at the competitors’ disposal. Dan Whittenburg has acted as the contest’s pronouncer for years, delivering words randomly from the provided list. A panel of judges determine if the spelling presented by the student was correct by holding up a green sign, or a red sign if the spelling was incorrect.

The bee is held in elimination rounds. If no student is able to pass the first round, all are brought back in for another chance. In the final round, the last student standing must spell two words correctly, if he or she cannot the students elimated from the previous round are brought back in for another chance.

Each year, schools hold their own in-house spelling bees to determine who will represent them at the county level. Students are eliminated until there are four left standing. This year, Noxon and Trout Creek schools will not be participating – partly due to registration fees and partly because the registration deadline snuck up on Trout Creek following teacher and staff shuffling.

Plains Schools will be sending eighth grader Dawson Brown, Piper Bergstrom from the seventh grade, sixth grade speller Romeo McCarren, and Kailyn Ducept from the fifth grade.

Hot Springs School competitors are Madalyn Homola from the fifth grade, Jeremiah Rexus, Josie Uski and Tayten Keller from the seventh grade (fifth grader Georgia Uski as an alternate).

Dixon School will be represented by fourth graders Katie Porter and Adele Ranney, Jayna Hale from the fifth grade, and sixth grader Jayden Whitehawk.

Thompson Falls Schools winning spellers were sixth grader Hattie Neesvig, JC Winslow from the fifth grade, seventh grader Declan Harris, and Sabrina McGaughey from the fourth grade.

The winner from the county bee will move on to the state level for a chance to move on to regionals and nationals – although the county has never had a contestant move past the state competition.