American Bee: The National Spelling Bee and the Culture of Word Nerds by James Maguire

Author:James Maguire [Maguire, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw
Publisher: Rodale Books
Published: 2006-05-15T22:00:00+00:00

Part5

Five Top Spellers Compete for Glory and Fame

“You’re just wearing every lucky charm possible, sleeping with lucky charms under your pillow, crossing your fingers, and praying that you’re going to get a word that you know.”

—Aliya Deri, 13, National Bee contestant

19 Preface to a Competition

Every winter, the process begins again. Spellers all across the country begin competing to earn a spot at Nationals. It’s like a great swim upstream, with some ten million kids at the beginning, getting quickly winnowed at each successive stage, until only the top 275 or so make it to Washington.

Depending on where a speller lives, their qualifying rounds proceed in myriad different ways. In some schools, they must win their classroom bee to compete in their school bee; other schools have an open bee with no preliminary class bees. Then, in some areas of the country, winners of school bees go directly to their regional bees; in other areas, this process is more challenging: A speller must win a district or city bee before advancing to their regional bee.

The regional, held in February or March, is the tough one. A speller must win here to travel to National. At regional, spellers compete against a field of winners. All the kids onstage have studied for this event, and many have studied quite hard. And everyone there knows they’re just one win away from a trip to the nation’s capital and the attendant prestige. Everyone wants to win.

In theory, spellers who have made it to Nationals in the prior year have an advantage. They know what to study and have an extra year of study behind them. But they are accorded no special privileges. As the competition begins afresh each year, they must start at the bottom and work their way up. And the Bee is replete with stories of competitors who made it to Washington one year but failed to earn a spot the next.

The following chapters profile five spellers who hope to win a spot in the 2005 National Bee. Each of them is a top competitor, based on their performance in the 2004 Nationals. Each of these five spellers, Marshall Winchester in North Carolina, Kerry Close in New Jersey, Samir Patel in Texas, Jamie Ding in Detroit, and Aliya Deri in San Francisco, faces a major challenge. They are proven winners, but, again, they must earn their spot anew. Will they make it to Washington?

With fingers crossed, they step up to the microphone . . .

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