Top speller will compete at regional bee

Eighteen nervous students began the annual spelling bee at Forreston Grade School and one student spelled her way to the regional bee.

In the first round the spellers got off to a fast start with the first seven correctly spelling their words.

The first miss of the day was when a student tripped on a homophone, two words that are spelled different but sound the same.

Third grader Braden Politsch spelled sheers, but the word that needed to be spelled was shears.

Two words later the nerves got to fourth grader Gabe Owens who rushed into spelling chef and accidently started by saying "s."  As soon as he said the letter he realized his mistake, but the rules do not allow a speller to correct a mistake.

The other speller missing a word was fourth grader Leah Folgate who misheard a word and spelled tanging instead of tangy.

For five rounds the spellers battled and continued to spell until fourth grader Kaitlin Gruhn was the only speller to get a word correct in the round.

Gruhn spelled flannel to advance to a final word when the other five students missed a word.

To win the spelling bee and advance to the regional bee in Dixon, Gruhn had to spell midriff.  With a slight pause to think about the spelling, Gruhn quickly spelled the world correct for the win.

The bee was not over at this point.  An alternate was needed so the five spellers who missed their word in round five were asked to continue spelling.

This was the first time the judges could remember that a winner was crowned without an alternate already decided.

Rules were examined and the runner up would be determined if the speller correctly spelled a word and the other spellers in the round missed a word.

A spelling bee winner needed to correctly spell two more words than the other spellers, the alternate only needed to spell one more word correctly.

With the rules clarified, the bee continued until round eight.

The first two spellers in the round third grader Ethan Cain and fourth grader Hannah Holze misspelled antalope (antelope) and lclilpse (eclipse).