More than 30 kids from across the Wasatch Back will compete next week to be crowned champion of The Park Record Regional Spelling Bee, a victory as sweet as honey.

The spelling bee is buzzing back to the Jim Santy Auditorium stage for the second year after a pandemic-induced hiatus, giving elementary and middle school students the chance to demonstrate their linguistic prowess.

Organizers expect 26 spellers at the Park Record Junior Bee on Tuesday. The March 4 event is for students in second through fifth grade. The top five spellers will advance to the regional bee on Wednesday, where they’ll join 19 spellers from grades six to eight. There’s a 5:30 p.m. start time for the junior and regional bees. The community is invited to attend.

Each event will take place in rounds with students given the chance to spell one word chosen by a pronouncer. The student has to correctly spell the word within 90 seconds and repeat the word either before or after spelling it. Spellers who answer correctly will remain in the competition and those who make a mistake will be asked to leave the stage. A group of judges — made up of Park Record staff, librarians and teachers — have the final say on each spelling.

The overall winner will represent the Wasatch Back at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington D.C. this spring. It is the 100th anniversary of the very first National Spelling Bee, according to Scripps.

Around 30 students from school districts in Summit and Wasatch counties competed in the regional competition last year. Most of the spellers made an earnest effort, with a few tearful kids leaving the stage.

Sasha Kenlon, a seventh-grade student at Ecker Hill Middle School, was named the queen bee of the 2024 competition. Kenlon went on to finish 192 out of 245 at the Scripps National Spelling Bee and said she enjoyed spending the rest of Bee Week with her friends and family. 

Park Record owners Tatiana and Matthew Prince, who purchased the newspaper in 2023, revived the local spelling bee last year. Before that, the spelling bee was last held in 2020. The Princes view the competition as a way to strengthen relationships with local schools, bring people together, and celebrate the community’s smart, talented youth.

“Last year’s competition provided a fantastic experience, particularly for our winner Sasha who attended the national finals,” Tatiana said. “We’re proud that so many local students have chosen to come out and compete, and we hope to make this a revived Park City tradition for many years to come.”

Beyond that, Don Rogers, the head judge last year and editor/publisher of The Park Record, said the experience was just plain fun.

“The kids took this seriously,” he said. “I enjoyed their intensity, how hard they obviously prepared, and their effort to spell hard words — many that I wouldn’t get without spellcheck or looking them up in the dictionary.”

The Park Record will pay for the travel and lodging expenses for the regional spelling bee winner and their family’s trip to D.C. for the national competition. Bee Week is scheduled from May 27 to 29 in the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland.

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Melinda Buhlman smiled with nervous energy when she received the final word. She knew how to spell it. Seven letters later, it was all over: C-H-A-G-R-I-N.

For the second year in a row, Buhlman, an eighth-grader at Rocky Mountain Middle School in Heber City, was the last speller standing. She fought off a stiff test from a talented group of students — and one thorny word that threatened to scuttle her bid to defend her title — to repeat as the champion of the fourth- through eighth-grade competition at the annual The Park Record Spelling Bee, held Tuesday, March 7.

Soren Nielsen, a seventh-grader from Rocky Mountain Middle School, finished second, while Jena Mahoney, a sixth-grader from Timpanogos Intermediate School, took third.

After her victory, Buhlman said keeping her title as the best speller on the Wasatch Back was exhilarating.

“You always have that doubt like, ‘There’s no chance I’m going to win,’” she said. “But there’s always a little glimmer of hope that you will win. It’s awesome to win again.”

The Park Record will now send Buhlman to compete in the nationally televised Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., which is scheduled for the end of May. At last year’s Scripps event, she spelled all her words correctly on stage but her preliminary test score — used to whittle the field to 50 competitors — kept her from qualifying as a finalist.

This time, armed with her experience from last year’s competition, she hopes to advance further. Since she’s in her last year of eligibility to participate in Scripps, it will be the final chance to leave her mark on the venerable bee.

“D.C. was awesome last year, and I’m going to try to improve my result,” she said.

Buhlman’s chances to get back to Washington, D.C., were nearly derailed late in Tuesday’s bee. With five spellers left, the word “umlaut” — defined as “the change of a vowel that is caused by partial assimilation to a succeeding sound or that occurs as a reflex of the former presence of a succeeding sound which has been lost or altered,” according to Merriam-Webster — almost tripped her up. She was visibly surprised when she got it right.

She said afterward that “umlaut” also gave her trouble while she was studying for the competition.

“I couldn’t remember if the start was two U’s or one because the spelling is weird,” she said.

In the second- and third-grade competition, Clark Cundick, a third-grader from Parley’s Park Elementary School, outlasted second-place finisher Isaac Heath of J.R. Smith Elementary School. The pair went back and forth for several minutes before Cundick eventually won on the word ‘gruff.’ Gabe Griffith, from Trailside Elementary School, finished third.

Cundick was excited to win, especially since he didn’t spend that much time getting ready for the bee.

“I actually just started the week before,” he said.

Andy Bernhard, the longtime publisher of The Park Record, said it’s an honor for the newspaper to be involved in the spelling bee. In total, more than 200 spellers in Summit and Wasatch counties participated in the spelling bee’s qualifiers in their schools, and Bernhard said he enjoys seeing the students rise to the challenge the bee presents each year.

“The Park Record Spelling Bee has become a milestone community event for so many students where everybody from second to eighth grade can play,” he said. “Seeing our finalists go after it on stage is really exciting. What a sense of accomplishment they must feel. It’s a testament to their hard work and perseverance, all of our students earned our respect and admiration.”

https://youtu.be/5mMaHsF6P34

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The 11th annual Park Record Spelling Bee was held at the Egyptian Theatre Tuesday evening, March 7, 2017, featuring competitions for 2nd and 3rd graders as well as 4th-8th graders. The 4th-8th grade bee will be sending its winner, two-time champion Melinda Buhlman, to Washington, D.C. in May to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. (Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

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