In mid-March, Noah Rowe weathered six rounds of spelling to defeat 29 other D.C. students and become the 42nd Washington Informer Spelling Bee champion. He will now represent the District at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Noah’s journey to first place, however, started long before the March 16 competition held at the D.C. Office of Cable Television, Film, Music and Entertainment (OCTFME). Four years ago, Noah suffered defeat at the local bee after rising through the ranks as a first-time spelling bee participant at Powell Elementary School in Northwest and later the cluster bee. Two years later, as a sixth grader, Noah met a similar fate when he made his second appearance in the citywide spelling bee.
Noah’s seventh grade year proved to be even tougher, as he didn’t even make it past the cluster bee. He told The Informer that those experiences inspired a strategy that kept him entirely focused on his instincts.
“My mistake the other times was that I overthought it. But this time, I always thought about my initial impression,” said Noah, an eighth grader at MacFarland Middle School in Northwest. His winning word was sophomoric, an adjective that means immature.
“I stuck to what I initially thought because my instincts are right,” Noah said.
The Competition: Spellers, Judges, Challenges and Lessons
The young people who participated in the 42nd Annual Washington Informer Spelling Bee collectively defeated more than 2,000 of their peers in school-wide bees and cluster bees that took place at THEARC in Southeast in February.
Celicy Fernandez hosted the March 16 bee, sponsored by District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS), OCTFME, Foundation of the Advancement of Music & Education (FAME), Pepco, Safeway Foundation, Silver Spring Signarama, Comcast and Washington Gas.
The day opened with greetings from LaToya Foster, director of OCTFME, and Washington Informer Publisher Denise Rolark Barnes.
Dr. Elizabeth Primas, an educational specialist and member of the Washington Informer Charities board, reviewed the rules before the start of the bee.
Primas, spelling bee coordinator Jason B. Moore, and Mauwena De-Souza of D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) served as judges.
Each student, representing either a District public, public charter, private or parochial school, took to the podium and listened as pronouncer David Zahren gave them a spelling word. Before spelling a word, they could ask for the definition, pronunciation and language of origin.
Spellers could also challenge their elimination.
Ethan Schott, a fifth grader at Key Elementary School in Northwest who misspelled discomfiture, a word meaning a feeling of embarrassment, successfully did so during the third round.
Other words that caused difficulty for spellers included morose, an adjective meaning sullen and ill-tempered; legalese, a noun meaning technical language found in legal documents; heleoplankton, a type of plankton that lives in freshwater; occipital, an adjective meaning related to the back of the head; heterophony, the simultaneous performance of the same melody by different instruments or voices; and blastema, a heterogeneous cell mass.
The citywide bee wrapped up with Nora Baker, a sixth grader from BASIS DC in Northwest, clinching the second-place spot.
Earlier in the competition, during the round Noah won first place, Nora was eliminated by pilosity, a word that means excessive hairiness.
After a panel of judges designated Noah as the first-place winner, Nora, joined Keilani Shakow from Janney Elementary School in Northwest, Ethan, Mekedim Gossaye of Center City Public Charter School Brightwood Campus, and Margaret Torrey of Holy Trinity School – to hash it out for second place.
Nora took second place after correctly spelling embolus, defined as a blood clot. If Noah is unable to compete in the national competition, Nora will take his place in representing the District.
The Informer’s Ron Burke later presented awards to the winners.
Prepping for the Bee, Never Giving Up
As Keilani looked back on her citywide spelling bee experience, she thought about what she described as the suspense of waiting for a word and her attempts not to feel overwhelmed while on stage.
Though she admitted disappointment, Keilani still relished her victory.
One notable aspect of her overall experience, she told The Informer, centered on the bond she solidified with Diana Suardi, fifth grader at Janney Elementary School and fellow citywide spelling bee participant who was her study buddy.
“I want people to study a lot and do it with friends so it doesn’t seem boring,” Keilani said.
Like her fellow spelling bee winners, Keilani also touted her love of reading as a tool in her advancement through the spelling bee. She counts book series like Rick Riordan’s “Percy Jackson & the Olympians” and Shannon Messenger’s “Keeper of Lost Cities” among her favorites.
“When you read a lot of books, you recognize words when you hear them, which is helpful for the spelling bee,” Keilani said. “ If you’ve never seen a word in your life, it’s much harder to spell it.”
In the months and years before the March 16 competition, Nora experienced a couple of milestones as a competitive speller, including tying for third place at last year’s citywide bee. She told The Informer that she prepared for this year’s spelling bee by studying 100 words per night.
As she explained, she never gave up on her goals.
“I never realized that I was that good of a speller, but I ended up winning my class and school,” Nora said. “I got more into spelling and studied and then I made it here. You have to work hard, study and focus on the words.”
First-place winner Noah also credits a love for reading with his success. He told The Informer that, throughout the years, he became increasingly familiar with several of the multisyllabic words he would ultimately encounter while preparing for the spelling bee.
Noah will go on to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee at The Gaylord National Harbor during Bee Week, Sunday, May 26 to Friday, May 31. The preliminaries begin on Tuesday, May 28 and the finals will be held on March 31.
For the local bee, the eighth-grader said his study regimen included reading three to four pages of words per day, and emphasized consistency is key in order to be victorious.
“The biggest thing for me is that persistence will lead to success. You have to keep pushing for the same goal.”
