Spelling Bee: A 'surmountable' challenge

Mar. 17—TRAVERSE CITY — Correctly spelling "rustication" launched Rhys Miller on a trip, but it'll hardly be a countryside retreat.

The Traverse City West Middle School eighth-grader is headed to the Scripps National Spelling Bee after besting 28 other spellers from 15 schools across northwest Michigan. After two hours and numerous rounds, only Miller and Lily Herman of St. Mary School were left.

Following what head judge and Record-Eagle Executive Editor Rebecca Pierce called a show-down, Miller clinched the spot in the nationals after spelling both "surmountable" and "rustication" correctly.

Miller said it was worth the effort to make regionals, his goal since winning a class bee in third grade.

"So I always wanted to come back and fulfill my promise to myself," he said. "Second of all, I would love to go to Maryland and Washington, D.C. and just be there."

Herman placed second after "refrigeration," and she knew before the judges rang the bell that she had goofed.

"While I was spelling it, I knew it was either with a 'd' or without a 'd,' and as soon as I spelled it I was like, 'That is not right,'" she said afterward.

Still, Herman was excited to make the final round and glad she placed second, she said — she wanted to win her third and final regional bee, but going to nationals seemed like "too much work."

Both Herman and Miller have a talent for spelling, according to family.

Diane Grant is Herman's grandma and next-door neighbor, and the two routinely worked on spelling together, Herman said. Both agreed there wasn't much of a technique other than lots of practice and lots of reading by Herman.

"She's a very good speller naturally, so it was just, give her a word and she would spell it," Grant said of her granddaughter. "If she didn't spell it correctly, we went over why and she would look at it, and she had it."

Miller only asks for help from his mom Lauren Murphy occasionally, she said. It's mostly his own initiative, and she's not sure how he does it — she saw herself in each contestant eliminated by a silent or double consonant, verb combo or any of the numerous spelling stumbling blocks.

"That's what I would do, probably," she said. "Yeah, it's so hard to recall in your mind and then actually verbalize."

TC West Middle School had a good showing, with Miller winning and Julia Martin finishing as runner-up. That wouldn't have happened unless Miller asked Kathryn Baumann, the school's eighth grade counselor, to bring back the school bee.

Parents of both students supported the idea, since Martin competed while attending Leland Public School, Baumann said.

Baumann's grandmother helped with the funding, and a dozen or so TC West middle schoolers met weekly to practice, the school counselor said. Beyond learning to spell and understanding the origins of words, club members gained both confidence and friends, Baumann and Miller agreed.

Rhys can be pretty quiet in school, Baumann said.

"To see him shining on stage is— it's worth it," she said.

March is a month more associated with college basketball and professional hockey teams jostling for playoff positions, but Scripps regional spelling bees are setting up another bracket altogether.

{p class="p1"}Replace the din of a stadium with the near-silence of the City Opera House audience, then swap out the pounding basketball or slap of hockey sticks with speller's footsteps as they stepped to the mic. And unlike in hockey, where the blat of the scoreboard horn signals a goal, spelling bee judges' tiny chiming of the bell was not what a speller wanted to hear.

{p class="p1"}Many junior orthographers stayed cool in their moment at the microphone while a few others showed some nerves — a hesitant step back here, fiddling with the mic cable there.

{p class="p1"}When Miller won, his voice shook with emotion, and a few words before then, he exclaimed, "Oh my gosh!" after learning he correctly spelled "reprieve."

{p class="p1"}Who could fault their nervousness in a competition where a single letter makes the difference?

{p class="p1"}Trying to intuit or sound out the spelling of many words in the full, 4,000-word list of study words, which the Scripps National Spelling Bee publishes each year as "Words of the Champions," can be tricky. English is a language where five vowels have many pronunciations that flex or flip depending on their context and a word's origins.

{p class="p1"}Those etymological traces also can be convoluted or unclear — "bachelorette" went from Celtic to Latin to French, with a part of it going from French to English, while "foozle" may be from a Germanic word, bee Pronouncer and Classical Interlochen Public Radio Host Kate Botello told the contestants who asked for more information.

{p class="p1"}Pierce agreed that English can be a hard language to spell.

{p class="p1"}"Yes, and it's because it is an amalgam of these different languages," she said. "It's a real patchwork quilt of words from different sources, and also it's a living thing, it changes."

{p class="p1"}That last point showed with words like "selfie," which Pierce said didn't exist until recently.

{p class="p1"}Another newer word, "steampunk," comes from author K. W. Jeter in 1987 describing a sci-fi subgenre, according to Merriam-Webster, but still older than all the contestants — 15 and under, and in grades eight (or equivalent) and lower, according to Scripps rules.

{p class="p1"}Botello opened by reminding she was there to help with definitions, example phrases and a few other hints allowed in the rules, like warning if a word sounded similar to others.

{p class="p1"}Pierce said she was impressed by how prepared all 29 contestants were. That made it hard for her to ring the bell when one misspelled a word, since it was clear they put in so much work. It was also a great feeling to see how family and friends supported each contestant.

{p class="p1"}The Record-Eagle sponsored the bee and will send both Miller and a parent, expenses paid, to the national competition, with preliminary rounds starting in May 28.

{p class="p1"}Murphy said she's sure her son will enjoy the national bee.

{p class="p1"}And Miller, who was already looking ahead to preparing for the competition, also looked back on how much he enjoyed spelling club and everything that led him there.

{p class="p1"}"I just think this is a great experience if you actually, like, try it," he said.