North Texas 7th grader is newest National Spanish Spelling Bee champion
Melody Hinkle was on stage waiting for the final word to be presented during a 24-round spelling bee where she faced off against 34 other contestants.
The word was tácito, a word she knew immediately, but she wrote it down on her white board just in case. She spelled out each letter in the word, including the accent mark, correctly.
Hinkle, a White Settlement student, won this year’s National Spanish Spelling Bee in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on July 12.
The 12-year-old won a trophy, a $4,000 cash prize, and an automatic bid to the 2026 National Spanish Spelling Bee to defend her title. She finished second in the spelling bee last year and wanted to prove she could win it all.
“I just got motivated because I knew I was that close last year, so I knew if I could study just a little bit more, then I could do just as well or even better this year,” Hinkle told the Star Telegram.
Hinkle has been in the White Settlement ISD dual language program since she was in first grade and has competed in Spanish spelling bees since she was in third grade. The dual language program begins in pre-kindergarten or kindergarten, and students receive instruction in both English and Spanish, with the goal of developing proficiency in both languages. Hinkle, who is in seventh grade, said it was difficult when she was first learning Spanish, but the spelling bees made the experience enjoyable.
The main difference between English and Spanish spelling bees are that contestants in the Spanish Spelling Bee have to say if a letter has a special mark, such as an accent or dieresis, and whether a letter should be capitalized. The Spanish Spelling Bee also allows contestants to use a small, handheld whiteboard.
While balancing school and band, and being historian for her school’s student council and part of the PE Hope Squad — a peer-to-peer suicide prevention programming — Hinkle studied 200 to 500 Spanish words for two hours every day.
Her parents are not Spanish speakers, but they helped as much as they could.
“I have to put them in Google Translate, and then she has to spell them to me in English, since I don’t know the Spanish alphabet,” Amy Hinkle, Melody’s mom, said. “And so that makes it longer, and it’s a little bit harder for her to do that, and then she has to remember not to spell them in English during the spelling bee.”
Eva Valenzuela, the school district’s dual language coordinator and Hinkle’s coach, has watched as Hinkle won spelling bees at her school, district and at the regional level to get to the nationals. Hinkle continued to study on the flight to New Mexico.
Participants are given a list of all of the Spanish words that might be asked during nationals. A mystery list of words not on the main list is brought out by the judges later in the competition to test participants’ analytical skills and their knowledge of root words.
“She definitely studied her heart out,” Valenzuela said. “She’s a very smart, but also very dedicated, little girl.”
Hinkle says she hopes to one day be the director of the dual language program for White Settlement — and she’s ready to defend her title next year.
