Sasha Kenlon considers reading a necessity, and her passion for the intellectual hobby was the catalyst that led the sixth-grade student from Weilenmann School of Discovery to explore linguistics and formalize her entry into the 2024 Park Record Regional Spelling Bee.
Kenlon was one of 27 competitors from across the Wasatch Back who took to the Jim Santy Auditorium stage on Wednesday afternoon with the gravitas of a scholar. Some of the students looked abashed while others appeared unfazed by the spelling competition.
But the sixth-grader displayed effortless command over her words, refusing to become headlong as she spelled, earning Kenlon the optimum title of champion.
“One of the reasons that I think it’s important to spell things right is that spell check might not be around forever, and we need to learn how to communicate with our own brains,” she said.
The National Spelling Bee was started in 1925 as a way to motivate students to improve their literacy skills. Park Record owners Tatiana and Matthew Prince committed to reviving the local competition after a four-year hiatus when they purchased the newspaper last March.
Students in Summit and Wasatch counties who performed well at their elementary and middle school bees were invited to the regional event in Park City. It kicked off with a junior event at the start of the week. The top five spellers moved on to the regional event on Wednesday, where the winner will advance to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., this spring. Students ranged between fifth and eighth grade.
“For a while, people kind of scratched their heads and were like, ‘Why do spelling bees matter?’ And I think this is one of those activities, even with autocorrect and spelling checkers and everything else, that the discipline it takes to be one of these kids that is sitting up here on stage who has worked really hard to be here … I think that sort of discipline pays off for the rest of your life,” Matthew said.
Competitors were largely successful in the first round, spelling words such as banana, trendy, handyman, earmark and broil. A seventh-grader from Park City Day School was the first to make a mistake when he misspelled caramel — forgetting the second “a” — and an eighth-grade boy from Timpanogos Middle School exited soon after when he swapped the “c” and “s” in exercise.
More eliminations came during subsequent rounds as the children attempted to spell respite, emerald, armadillo, situation, combustible, advection, mantra, ancho, clowder, solicit, misconception, elasticity, entreat, marshal, fisticuffs, entrepreneur, divey and frailty.
Through it all, the kids remained supportive and encouraging of each other.
Spellers would often ask the judges for alternative pronunciations, definitions, the origin of the word or for it to be used in a sentence. This also helped ensure the students knew what they were being asked to spell if there was a homonym or similar word.
Runner-up Leo Dailey, a sixth-grade student at Ecker Hill Middle School, said listening for silent vowels as the word is said a different way or identifying the root word can help determine which letters to use. Kenlon is taking Latin, which was also helpful.
Most students were eliminated during the fourth round of the competition with just three spellers remaining: Kenlon, Dailey and eighth-grade Weilenmann student Anthony Kondra.
The trio breezed through another set of words: nonconformist, vegetarian, garniture, maverick, fipple, tangerine, fie, freegan, archetype.
Round 13 started with Kenlon spelling “posterity” correctly. Next, Dailey misspelled his word. Then, so did Kondra. Under the rules, Kenlon would have to spell a final word right or all three students would restart in a new round.
“Accumulate,” said pronouncer Kirsten Nilsson, a youth services librarian with the Summit County Library. Without hesitation, Kenlon responded. “Accumulate. A-C-C-U-M-U-L-A-T-E.”
Thunderous applause erupted through the auditorium before it was followed by another back-and-forth between the two boys as they battled for second place.
Eventually, Dailey earned the alternate position after Kondra was eliminated when he added an “s” to a word he otherwise spelled correctly.
Dailey said he was surprised by how well he did in the regional spelling bee, beating his own expectations. Now he’s looking forward to making it even further next year.
Kenlon looks forward to attending the national competition with her family, though she’s going to do a bit more studying to help her prepare for “Bee Week” in May.
“I’ll try to do two pages of (vocabulary) a day,” she said.