I made it to DC in 1997…prior to that, I had been to my state spelling bee three times.
I was in four spelling bees–4th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. We had spelling bees in the classrooms for all of my elementary (starting with first) and middle school years. The top two spellers in the class got to go on to the school bee.
In the above-mentioned grades, I went to the school bee. In 6th and 8th, I went to District by winning the school bee (I was quite proud of myself in sixth grade for beating seventh and eighth graders). I never went beyond district though.
I could have in sixth grade if not for saying “J” instead of “K”. I knew it was “K,” it just came out wrong. sighs The principal was worried about me when I cried in my mom’s lap after that. It sucked.
It was compulsory to participate in the classroom bees, at least if you didn’t want an F, but if you didn’t want to participate in the school bee the third best speller would be called up and so on.
Never participated and can’t spell to this day.
BTW Why are they called “bees”??? I’ve never figured that one out.
I came in second in my seventh grade county spelling bee. For a few minutes I actually thought I’d won, but a parent in the audience pointed out a technicality (I was supposed to hand off the microphone to someone else at a certain point but the official gave me another word instead…or something like that) so we had to start again from that point. By the time all the officials and parents had finished arguing, I was so flustered that I screwed up on “acknowledge.”
The first-place winner’s mom felt sorry for me, so I got to travel to Las Vegas with them to watch the state bee (but not participate). The girl who’d beat me actually placed at state and went on to the national bee. I don’t remember how well she did there though.
I went to Catholic school in the early - to - mid 80s. Our class usually had a spelling bee each month or so, and a schoolwide bee yearly. I always won the class bee, but only won the school bee once - 7th grade. I went on to win the county bee, and finish fifth in the NJ state bee. I spelled “superfluous” wrong. Fuck.
And the prize I won for fifth place? A dictionary, I shit you not.
My glory days, I suppose.
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One day in fifth grade, in an in-class spelling bee, I was at the end of the line when the teacher began things with “martyr.” Nobody seemed to be able to wrap their minds around the possibility of the letter “y” being in the word, so I spelled it correctly after the whole class had missed.
Since obviously the spelling bee hadn’t eaten up enough time, the teacher had all the kids line up again, which made me feel a little cheated! We already had a spelling bee and I had won, so I didn’t like the idea of my win being treated like some kind of practice round!
I was a spelling bee geek. Made it to the state level and came in 5th … later to find out that the word that I went out on (raisiney) isn’t even in the damn dictionary! Why the hell were they asking me to spell it?!
And no, spelling bee culture isn’t taken seriously in the US. It’s joked about just as we joke about kids unusually gifted in science, math, art, etc. We save seriousness for the jocks.
Interesting article about a spelling bee favorite losing early in today’s AJC. Just thought it might be relevant to the OP.