It didn’t take long to crown a champion of the 2016 Grundy County Spelling Bee – in fact, Andrew Flentje was named the winner in just the third round of the competition, held Tuesday afternoon at the Laredo R-7 School.
After a brutal first round that saw 16 of the 26 contestants spell their word incorrectly, 10 spellers entered round two. There, the winners of the event would be identified as Andrew, Abby Webb and Jillian Simpson survived and moved on to the decisive third round. Andrew, a seventh grade student at Pleasant View R-6 School correctly spelled “patrician” while Abby and Jillian were both tripped on their words. Andrew then correctly spelled “nascent” to win the crown and a trip to the Regional Spelling Bee in St. Joseph.
That left Abby, a Grundy R-5 seventh-grader, and Jillian, an R-6 sixth grader to battle it out for second place. The two went three rounds misspelling words such as “gossamer”, “xenophobic”, “basilica”, “anemone”, “cameo” and “sushi” (please note the use of spell check for this story) before Abby correctly spelled renovate and Jillian was tripped up by chutney. Abby then correctly spelled “sonata” to take second place and relegate Jillian to the role of alternate to the regional bee.
Both Andrew and Abby, who will compete at the regional bee at St. Francis Xavier Parish Center in St. Joseph on March 14, credited their mothers with helping them with their success. Andrew said his mom would give him a list of words every night and make note of those he got wrong for further review. Abby said her mom also went over her words with her and if she missed one, would make her work on it until she got it right. The top three all agreed the words were difficult and Andrew admitted that he would have missed “chutney,” the final word that Jillian misspelled, had he received that word.
Other students who participated in the event included Cole Peterson, Aidan Rains, Tabby Couy, Emika Shoemaker, Makenzie Talley, Ellen Baxter and Aubrey Gann of Grundy R-5; Kaylea Boyle, Katie Markell, Kaci Persell, Bekah Baker, Hannah Stark, Sara Spencer and Rillie Ratliff of Trenton Middle School; Rylee Johnson, Cooper Lewis, Robert Urich and Tanner Williams of Laredo R-7; and Megan Spencer, Gabe Gamble, Shelby Williams, Warren Meservey and Grace Allen of Pleasant View R-6.
Judges for the event were Mary Peterson, Bev Bosley and Amy Currie, while Tammie Wiebers was the pronouncer.