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03-25-09
SPECIAL REPORT
A. B. Davis student wins marathon Mt. Vernon district-wide Spelling Bee Championship; trip to Washington awaits him

     The beautiful and spacious Longfellow Elementary School auditorium was once again the site of Mount Vernon's annual district-wide Spelling Bee, held Tuesday night, March 24.
     Spelling Bee coordinators in each elementary and middle school worked laboriously and diligently, hosting building-level competitions the week before the actual major event took place on March 24. 
     The district-wide Spelling Bee, sponsored by the Mount Vernon Inquirer, is becoming a popular tradition in the Mount Vernon Schools, and the students look forward to competing in their schools, then at the district level, and for one lucky student, the opportunity to travel to Washington, DC to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
     This year's championship Spelling Bee event showed a dramatic improvement over the previous two events, since the coordinators of the event, led by Tahira Chase, have finally mastered the logistics of organizing the event, and their effort was evident when record crowds in the hundreds attended the three Spelling Bee sessions. As people entered the Longfellow Elementary School auditorium, they were awed by the many handcrafted banners adorning the walls of the auditorium, all created by Mount Vernon students. In addition, the facility looked splendid and the Spelling Bee competition commenced on schedule.
     Entering the auditorium first in a long single file to commence the competition were the Honey Bees, the youngest group of competitors, encompassing students from kindergarten through the 1st grade. The contestants, although very young, demonstrated they were well prepared and competed against each other commendably. As the students were knocked out of the competition and walked off the stage, most of them cried as they ran in the direction of a waiting parent.
     The three finalists in this group consisted of:

·         First Place: Joshua Clarke - Lincoln

·         Second Place: Brandon Fairweather - Holmes

·         Third Place: Aaliyah Wright - Grimes

     Next to compete before the main event unfolded were the Worker Bees. This group was comprised of students from grades 2-3, and they too were extremely well prepared for the tough competition. The competition was fierce and the judges actually exhausted their list of words for their grade level, forcing them to use Scripps National Spelling Bee words.
     Climaxing the competition were three brilliant spellers who went toe-to-to for several rounds until there was was speller left standing.
     The three finalists in this group consisted of:

·         First Place: Letia Jones - Holmes

·         Second Place: Gibson Thomas - Lincoln

·         Third Place: Maxwell Smith - Traphagen

     There was electricity in the air as contestants competing in the main event walked past hundreds in the auditorium to their seats on stage. The final group of spellers are known as Bumble Bees (grades 4-8), and this year's group of Bumble Bees engaged in 15 nail-biting rounds of ferocious, and sting like a bee competition.
     Many of the contestants were knocked out by the second round due to the tough words they were asked to spell, but the ones that remained engaged in a marathon type fight to the finish, with the audience awed by the difficulty of the words the students were spelling correctly. Many were scratching their heads in amazement.
     It took 15 rounds to determine the winner, and when it was all over, the three finalists received a standing ovation from the impressed audience comprised of parents, relatives, friends, teachers, politicians, district officials and others.
     The winner of the big event was Legan Bayombo, who is a student at A. B. Davis Middle School. His performance was simply incredible and many in the audience described the tall, well dressed and handsome young man as, "brilliant."
     The other two exceptionally talented spellers included:

·         Second Place: LaBrea Pringle - Longfellow

·         Third Place: Christina Alston - A. B. Davis

     For the third year in a row, Mount Vernon is the only municipality in all of Westchester County that is sending a student to Washington, DC to participate in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
     The Bee is the nation’s largest and longest-running educational promotion, administered on a not-for-profit basis by The E.W. Scripps Company and sponsors in the United States, American Samoa, Canada, China, Europe, Ghana, Guam, Jamaica, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, South Korea, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
     The main purpose behind the Bee is to help students improve their spelling, increase their vocabularies, learn concepts, and develop correct English usage that will help them all their lives.
     The Louisville Courier-Journal started the event with nine contestants in 1925. In 1941 Scripps assumed sponsorship of the program. There was no Scripps National Spelling Bee during the World War II years of 1943, 1944, and 1945. Co-champions were declared in 1950, 1957, and 1962. Of the 84 champions, 43 have been girls and 41 have been boys.
     The Mount Vernon Inquirer will be sending Legan Bayombo to Washington, DC, accompanied by his parents, to compete nationally on May 28 and 29 at the Washington, DC Hyatt Regency.
     The Scripps National Spelling Bee will broadcast live on May 29 at 10 AM on ESPN and the finals live at 8 PM on ABC.

Photo Gallery



Lowes Moore pictured with the Bumble Bee finalists

The judges for the main event