Elementary and middle school students from the Lower Shore vie to be called the area’s top speller on Saturday, March 1 at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.
UMES will host the 12th Eastern Shore Regional Spelling Bee at the Ella Fitzgerald Performing Arts Center, which is set to begin at 10 a.m.
A new champion will be crowned as 52 eligible students in grades three through eight from schools from Dorchester, Somerset, Wicomico, and Worcester counties look to show off their spelling skills.
Last year’s champion, Conor Keightley-Reinherdt, of Crisfield Academy & High School, who was victorious with the word “phlebotomy,” is now a high school freshman, and is retired from competition, according to the Scripps National Spelling Bee rules.
The Maryland Eastern Shore Regional Spelling Bee, sponsored by UMES since 2013, will award the winner with an all-expense paid trip to the 100th Scripps National Spelling Bee, including Bee Week, which takes place May 26-30 at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland.
Competitors are presented with a word to spell in front of a panel of judges and an audience. Successful spellers continue to the next round, while a misspelled word eliminates the competitor.
One or two rounds will bypass the time-honored spelling routine and instead challenge competitors to select an answer from a multiple-choice list asking for the definition of a word presented by the announcer. (All competitors at the national level take a computerized vocabulary test that is used as a tie-breaker.)
In addition to the fully-sponsored trip to the National Spelling Bee, the Maryland Eastern Shore regional champion receives a one-year subscription to the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Online Dictionary and Britannica Online Premium.
The event is free and open to the public to watch.
For more information, please go to www.umes.edu/bee.
