The Chesterton High School 2023 Spell Bowl Team has officially wrapped up its season! The Spell Bowl comprises teams of nine with members spanning from freshmen to seniors. Together, the team studies over 3,000 words and each person has a set to master. At competitions, the teams compete to compile the most correctly spelled words. A team member is sat down with a random teacher and is given words to spell out. Their practicing is on a more individualized basis and then they come together for competitions.
At this year’s district competition, the Chesterton team competed against LaPorte and Valpo. Other schools such as Morgan Township and Boone Groove also competed, but due to their smaller size, they were not in the same division. At districts, the team came in first place beating both of their competitors.
Regionals were hosted at Washington Township and were quite a success for the 2023 team, as they won beating both LaPorte and Valpo! Both teams had ten members, while Chesterton only had nine. It was very close but when it came down to it, Chesterton won by four points, while Laporte and Valpo tied.
Unfortunately, to qualify for the state competition, teams must get a certain number of points as a baseline. This year the baseline to qualify was 61 and the team got 57. However, the team still had quite an impressive season! The team bonded and had fun along the way.
“I can be a pretty a pretty talkative person especially when I’m doing something I like. And I really like spell bowl,” junior member Marlee Wilson said.
This season also brought success for individual members. At regionals, Junior Novice, Carson Foster, got a perfect score, spelling every single word correctly. It is quite an impressive feat for Foster, especially being a novice
“I don’t really study all that much, I just use context clues and spell stuff phonetically,” perfect speller Foster said.
As Foster still has one season left, they have quite an exciting future ahead of them!
“I’m looking forward to improving our score and hopefully making it to state!”, Foster beamed.
The Spell Bowl Team wrapped up their year on a high and it will only get better!
