We won second place!
On Thursday evening, I had the pleasure of helping bring home the second place trophy of this year’s annual Carroll Literacy Council Spelling Bee.
I’ve participated in the Spelling Bee for four years now, either as an alternate or an on-stage member, and this year, I got to spell on stage again as team captain. My teammates were excellent; all of us are English majors and one of my teammates is also a Latin tutor, which was advantageous. Getting to spell in teams is a lot of fun and it definitely takes the pressure off — before a teammate goes up to the microphone to spell a word, he or she gets to convene with his or her teammates to determine its spelling.
The word that totally stumped us was “quoddy,” a type of Native American open sloop-rigged sailboat. Spelling it “q-u-a-t-t-y” just didn’t cut it. However, since other teams picked easier words or spelled words incorrectly and lost points, we were able to win second place. It was a close match. The first place team won by only one point, and our team actually tied with the third place team. The only reason why got second place was because we had selected a final word with a higher point value than that team had.
Last year, our team won first place, so I hoped that we could repeat that. However, spelling bees are incredibly unpredictable, so I was just as happy with second. Winning second place was a great way to end four years as a member of Team We Spell McDaniel. I have a lot of fond (and frustrating) memories of spelling with some cool people and always celebrating with them at Hoffman’s Ice Cream : )
Win or lose, we always treat ourselves to Hoffman’s after the spelling bee — it’s tradition!
Leave a Reply