Joshua girl wins spelling bee
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FORT WORTH -- Some contestants in the Star-Telegram Regional Spelling Bee cautiously asked the pronouncer to repeat the word, define it, give the country of origin and use it in a sentence before they attempted to spell the word.
Others confidently spelled the word -- some in rapid-fire fashion, others slowly pronouncing each letter -- as they stood before microphones on a yellow-and-black-bedecked stage at the Will Rogers Roundup Inn.
After 18 rounds of successively harder and more obscure words to eliminate most of the top 29 spellers from 700 schools in 11 counties, that left just Joshua eighth-grader Hannah Chi and Mansfield third-grader Allen Gomez.
After misspelling conspiracy, 8-year-old Allen was asked to stand by while 14-year-old Hannah correctly spelled affirmative. She was declared champion after correctly spelling malleable.
Accompanied by her mother, her principal and a librarian from Loflin Middle School, Hannah credited her older brother, David, who placed third in the regional bee as a sixth-grader, with persuading her to compete in the fourth grade.
"He inspired me to do this," said Hannah, who placed sixth in the regional bee as a fifth-grader, third as a sixth-grader and lost at the district level last year.
Hannah admits she had trouble with a few words including mahout -- the keeper and driver of an elephant. But hours of studying paid off, she said.
"Yea, I'm excited," she said. "But I feel kind of bad because other people lost."
Allen, accompanied by his mother and two teachers from Kenneth Davis Elementary, said he will be back next year.
"I thought I was going to be first place but I was second," he said.
Rolinda Gomez said she hopes next year will be her son's turn to attend the national competition in Washington, D.C.
"He's confident he will be No. 1," she said.
