| BY
BILL CAMPEAU - SIERRA STAR
BILL
CAMPEAU
Ben Like (left), Josh Monahan and Tia Thomas rest a bit after their
grueling spelling bee victories.
Tia Thomas is
8 years old. She is in the fourth grade at Mountain Home School. Last
Tuesday evening in a spelling bee tour de force that was both remarkable
and completely unprecedented, she became the 2004 Eastern Madera County
Regional Spelling Bee champion, outlasting some 28 competitors to
achieve her unique goal.
Wordmaster Dr. Susan Macey, former principal of Coarsegold Elementary,
where the bee was held, and who is now a professor of education at
Fresno State, said she had never seen anything like it. “I don’t think
it’s ever happened before.”
Finishing second was Ben Like, an eighth grade student at Rivergold
Elementary, whose misspelling of “lacrosse” gave Miss Thomas her opportunity
to spell “diva.” Josh Monahan, an eighth grade student at Chawanakee
Academy, edged two other spellers in a run-off for third place. He
correctly spelled “fronds.”
The championship bee, the third of the spelling contests that saw
students from 14 area schools compete, was held before a packed audience
at Coarsegold Elementary School. Champions who won the kindergarten
through fifth grade contests, plus entrants from the sixth, seventh
and eighth grade classes, all participated in the championship round.
A breathless and very happy Tia Thomas, like the winning athletes
who announce on television after the game that they’re going to go
Disneyland, said: “I’m taking my mom to Washington.”
The winning speller gets an all-expense-paid round-trip for two (the
winner and a chaperone) to compete in the Scripps-Howard National
Spelling in Washington, D.C. in late May. Her mother, Pamela Thomas,
said Tia had studied “very, very hard every day” to achieve her goal.
Judges were Darylsue Stephensen, a member of the Coarsegold Kiwanis
Club, and Christine Wilder, a member of the Coarsegold school board.
The championship bee began calmly enough. But gradually the words
took their toll. Jewel. Terrific. Anatomy. Reindeer. Domestic. Then
came two killers. Immersed and waltz nailed three each. After shriek,
righteous, alias and aeronautic, only five students were left. That’s
when Josh Monahan correctly spelled fronds to place third. Ben Like
tripped up on lacrosse and Tia Thomas, who had to spell two words
in a row, correctly spelled diva.
Schools participating in the bees were Chawanakee Academy, Raymond-Knowles
Elementary, Oakhurst Elementary, Sierra View Elementary, Mountain
Home School. Wasuma Elementary, Coarsegold Elementary, Bass Lake Elementary,
Spring Valley, Oak Creek Intermediate, Seventh Day Adventist, North
Fork Elementary, Coarsegold Home School and RivergoId Elementary.
|