From City News Service
A pair of Southland eighth-graders were eliminated Wednesday from the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Oxon Hill, Md.Alan Shi, an eighth-grader at Sierra Vista Middle School in Irvine, was the first student eliminated during the second round of the bee when he misspelled "cynosure," meaning a person or thing that is the center of attention.
Rebecca Baron, a student at Chatsworth Hills Academy, correctly spelled words in the second and third rounds, but her score on computerized spelling and vocabulary tests taken Tuesday were not enough to propel her into Thursday's semifinals.
Rebecca nailed the spellings of "trattoria" -- a small Italian restaurant -- and "ogival" -- a distribution curve or diagonal rib of a Gothic vault.
This year's competition marked the first time the bee, which began with 281 contestants, incorporated vocabulary questions.
"It represents a deepening of the bee's commitment to its purpose -- to help students improve their spelling, increase their vocabularies, learn concepts and develop English usage that will help them all their lives," according to Paige Kimble, the bee's executive director and its 1981 champion.
Rebecca is 13, has written several novel-length works and well as many short stories and poems.
She is also an avid reader, especially of Shakespeare, and the latest research in physics and astronomy. She has a dog named Trigger, cats named Dante and Wondie, and hermit crabs named Joe and Pippin.
Baron won the L.A. County spelling bee in February.
Alan is 14, plays the piano and swims. He enjoys listening to classical music, especially Mozart, and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese.
The bee is limited to students in eighth grade or below, with contestants ranging in age from 8 to 14 years old.
The original field included students who won locally sponsored bees in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, along with American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Department of Defense schools in Europe.
Seven foreign nations were also represented -- the Bahamas, Canada, China, Ghana, Jamaica, Japan and South Korea.The winner of the bee will receive $30,000 from Scripps, which owns television stations and newspapers; a $2,500 U.S. savings bond and complete reference library from the dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster; and $2,000 in reference works from Encyclopaedia Britannica.
The semifinal and championship rounds will be held Thursday, with a contestant eliminated after he or she misspells a word.
ESPN2 will carry the semifinals from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Thursday. The championship finals will be on ESPN from 5-7 p.m. Thursday.
Throughout the entire competition, ESPN3.com will carry a second "play along" version, where viewers will have the option to view coverage without seeing the word until the last second so they can test their spelling skills against the champion spellers. This is ESPN's 20th year of covering the bee.
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