Berkeley County Middle College High School issued the following announcement on February 9.
At 5:30 p.m. Thursday, nearly 40 middle school students took the stage in Goose Creek High’s auditorium to spell their best in the Berkeley County School District 2022 Spelling Bee.
After an hour and 45 minutes, the competition came down to Daniel Island School seventh-grader Alice Liao and Sangaree Middle seventh-grader Anderson Eneim. They both endured a few rounds of tackling some tricky words together until Liao ultimately came out on top with the winning word “physicists.”
Liao said she practiced a lot because she has always wanted to place in the spelling bee.
“It feels really, really cool,” she said. “That’s not a very good description, but it just feels cool.”
Liao also participated in last year’s spelling bee though it came in the form of a written test because of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, this was Eneim’s first time participating in the district spelling bee, and said he actually did not study a whole lot and instead attributed his wide vocabulary to his hobbies.
“It’s not anything to really sweat about,” he said. “I just read a lot, play a lot of video games and I just have a large vocabulary because of that.”
Daniel Island School eighth-grader Amaris Wint placed third in the spelling bee and Sangaree Middle eighth-grader Caitlyn Glenn placed fourth. The top nine spellers from the bee (see list below) will go on to the regional spelling bee, Spellbound!, in March.
The district spelling bee was open to middle school students who already placed in their school’s spelling bee. As they vied for the position of top speller, students were given words like “hodgepodge,” “haphazard”, “fructose”, “monopolize”, “obsolete”, “misconception” and “lexicon”, to name a bunch more.
Dr. Anthony Dixon, Chief Academic and Innovation Officer for BCSD; Karen Bates, retired BCSD teacher; and Sloane Chinners, district science coordinator all served as judges for the event.
Laura Garner, English teacher at Philip Simmons High, served as the spelling bee’s pronouncer. The pronouncer pronounces words according to diacritical markings in Scripps’ National Spelling Bee Word Lists. The pronouncer may say if a word has one or more homonyms, showing which word is to be spelled by defining the word.
The pronouncer can also respond to spellers’ requests for a word to be repeated, a definition, sentence, part of speech, language of origin, or alternate pronunciation.
Garner would say a word twice. Students were encouraged to speak as clearly as possible and in a timely manner.
The rules change a little bit when it comes down to the final two students on stage; if one student misspells a word, the other student must correctly spell the same word and then correctly spell an additional word.
Liao and Eneim endured a couple of rounds of attempting to spell “leguminous”, “diaspora”, “onerous” and “quiddity” – the last of which Liao was able to correctly recite before nailing “physicists", even despite a brief moment of hesitation where she thought she lost her spot mid-word.
Liao said she utilized the study guide and a dictionary, and also covered prefixes and languages in order to prepare for the spelling bee.
“It was fun – even though it was scary,” she said.
BCSD’s top nine spellers who are off to Spellbound! are as follows:
- Alice Liao – seventh grade, Daniel Island School
- Anderson Eneim – seventh grade, Sangaree Middle
- Amaris Wint – eighth grade, Daniel Island School
- Caitlyn Glenn – eighth grade, Sangaree Middle
- Maelynn Nance – eighth grade, Berkeley Middle
- Milo Smith – seventh grade, Westview Middle
- Jack Snowa – eighth grade, Hanahan Middle
- Parker Hubbard – sixth grade, Cane Bay Middle
- Taylor Harrison – seventh grade, Berkeley Middle
BCSD would also like to recognize its students who participated in the district spelling bee:
Ivanna Ramos – seventh grade, Berkeley Middle
Taylor Harrison – seventh grade, Berkeley Middle
Carter Nix – seventh grade, Cane Bay Middle
Jennifer Relwani – eighth grade, Cane Bay Middle
Sarai Grooms – seventh grade, College Park Middle
Nahla Clunis – sixth grade, College Park Middle
William Grant – eighth grade, Cross High
Tyler Arris – seventh grade, Cross High
William Temple – eighth grade, Cross High
Eva Beaubien – sixth grade, Daniel Island School
Sydnee Echols – eighth grade, Hanahan Middle
Siqi Fang – seventh grade, Hanahan Middle
Addison Metts – eighth grade, Macedonia Middle
Owen Berrios – eighth grade, Macedonia Middle
Micah Powers – seventh grade, Macedonia Middle
Mia Embree-Stone – eighth grade, Marrington Middle School of the Arts
Anabella Teal – eighth grade, Marrington Middle School of the Arts
Shiven Patel – eighth grade, Philip Simmons Middle
Grace Hatcher – sixth grade, Philip Simmons Middle
Sofia Niosi – eighth grade, Philip Simmons Middle
Ever Easton – sixth grade, Sangaree Middle
Synclaire Fraiser – seventh grade, Sedgefield Middle
Trevarie Johnson – seventh grade, Sedgefield Middle
Falcon Weaver – sixth grade, Sedgefield Middle
Tyler Frasier – eighth grade, St. Stephen Middle
Milo Smith – seventh grade, Westview Middle
Wyatt Lee – eighth grade, Westview Middle
Parker Tomberlin – eighth grade, Westview Middle
Monica Kreber
kreberm@bcsdschools.net
Original source can be found here.
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