Last Saturday, the CHS Spell Bowl Team traveled down to Purdue’s West Lafayette campus to compete at state. After a three-hour competition, the team ended up in the finals, which placed them in the top 3% of high schools in Indiana.
“It went fantastic…Top 3% in the state is incredible, and I’m really proud of [the team],” commented Jennifer Jendrzejczyk, CHS staff sponsor of the Spell Bowl Team.
In order to qualify for the state competition, the Spell Bowl team had to compete at the area competition against local schools, which took place at Washington Township High School.
At the area competition, the team had 3 near-perfect scores (8/9): Senior Logan Arthur and Freshman Lorelai Simmons. Senior Marlee Wilson and Junior Ray Hundt were near-perfect spellers at the virtual DAC competition the week prior.
After placing 2nd at the area competition, and making the score cut necessary to qualify for state, the Spell Bowl team was invited to compete at the state competition held at Purdue University in West Lafayette.
Each member of the team spent a significant amount of time practicing and preparing for the competition, especially once they found out they made state.
“For the last three weeks, every single SRT or yearbook block that I had – which was every day of school – I had one of my friends quiz me on the words she thought were difficult,” recalled Marlee Wilson, Co-Captain of the Spell Bowl Team.
Team members quizzed each other on the buses to the competitions, as well. Despite weeks of preparation, though, it was still impossible to memorize every single word on the provided list.
“The list is 3000 words long, so it’s really not possible to memorize all 3000 words,” said Jendrzecjzyk. “We did talk about trying to break it down into prefixes you might know, suffixes you might know, things like that.”
Though they practiced together, much of the Spell Bowl team prepared by themselves or with a single partner. They studied individually, trying to memorize abnormal words.
“I know several of the kids studied on their own, and tried to memorize, especially, the words that had hyphens, or spaces, or accents, or capital letters,” explained Jendrzecjzyk.
English is a very difficult language to learn, even for those who are native speakers. Elementary schools teach many spelling and grammar rules, but there’s a good amount of expectations for those rules. And the spell bowl list of words was full of 3000 words chosen for their difficulty. Spelling 5 out of 9 words right is about average. Anything above that is commendable.
“I didn’t do as well as I wanted to…I got 6/9 words right,” recounted Wilson.
Although she didn’t meet her goal, spelling 6 of the 9 words she was given is something most people wouldn’t be able to do. Here are some examples of the words assigned to the competitors: myrmecophilous, pugnacious, hors d’oeuvre, alkalosis, and subterfuge.
The 10 spellers who competed at state consisted of Marlee Wilson (12), Jocelyn Ringler (12), Rebecca Adcock (12), Bailey Pikula (11), Milena Letic (12), Lorelai Simmons (9), Savannah Scheffler (11), Jany Zhang (11), Carmen Thomas (12), and Carson Foster (12).
Additional members of the team include Declan Ringler, Jackson Leasure Bender, Giszell Pfieffer, Sloane Colburn, and Ray Hundt.
