Advertisement The CESA No. 4 Regional Spelling Bee is scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 10 at the Marie W. Heider Center in West Salem. If needed a snow day make-up will be held on Friday, Feb. 12. Doors will open at 9:00 a.m. and morning refreshments will be available. The regional spelling bee will begin at 10:00 a.m.
Each school who has registered with the Scripps National Spelling Bee is able to send one finalist to the regional bee on Feb. 10th. Two area schools, Holmen Middle School and Onalaska Middle School have winners attending the Feb. 10 event.
Eighth-grader Lynsey Malin won the Holmen Middle School spelling bee Jan. 27. Malin is an experienced spelling-bee contender, having entered every one she could since she was in fourth grade. This is her first win.
“I am really excited about going to the district level,” Malin said. “My parents are excited for me because I’ve done it so many times.”
The winning word for her was centennial. Her winning strategy for hard words is to write them with her fingers in the air or on a podium before she vocalizes the letters.
Matthew Grubb, a sixth-grader at Holmen Middle School was the runner up. The 11-year-old is upset with himself that he missed spelling the easy word oblige but was able to spell harder words like subterranean. He, too, is a practiced speller, having won first place when he attended Galesville Elementary school. He missed out on district competition because he was sick that day.
At Onalaska Middle School, sixth-grader Spencer Runde was the winner, beating out seventh-grader Oliver Garrott at the school’s contest Jan. 21. The winning word for Runde was circuitous.
The top five finalists from the CESA No. 4 Regional Spelling Bee at the Heider Center will be eligible to compete in the Wisconsin State Journal Badger State Spelling Bee at Monona Grove High School in March.
The winner of the state spelling bee will move on to Scripps National Bee in Washington, D.C.
