Vinny wins spelling bee with ‘cilantro’
by February 5, 2012 3:19 pm 171 views
Vinny Nguyen, a fifth grader from Christ the King Catholic School, spelled “cilantro” and “eulogy” correctly to win the 28th annual Sebastian County Spelling Bee, held Saturday (Feb. 4) in Breedlove Auditorium on the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith campus.
The event was sponsored by BancorpSouth.
Nguyen’s climb to the top took a little more than two hours and 12 rounds. He was awarded a $2,000 scholarship to UAFS and the event’s traveling trophy, which will be displayed at his school until next year’s event.
The competition included 38 students in grades 4-8 from all over the county. Nguyen will now proceed to the Arkansas State Spelling Bee, presented by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on March 3 at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
Samia Ismail, and eighth grader at R. E. Wells Junior High School in Greenwood finished second, and Destiny Sims, a sixth grader at Morrison Elementary School came in third.
At the start of the local contest, Carl Hill, assistant principal at Cook Elementary, welcomed guests and explained the rules. Words were chosen at random from a list of 250-350 entries on Merriam-Webster's Spell It website, which is the Scripps National Spelling Bee study site for school spelling bee competitions.
Joe Hardin, dean and professor in the UAFS College of Languages and Communication, pronounced the words for the students. He provided the definition, the origin and the use of the word in a sentence at the students’ request. If the word had more than one pronunciation or was a homonym, he gave the other pronunciations and definition.
Hardin noted that fewer foreign words were used than in last year’s spelling bee.
BancorpSouth, awarded savings accounts to the first through third place winners in the amounts of $100, $50 and $25, respectively. Additionally, the bank funds the traveling trophy, engraving of the individual plaques and provides the winner with $300 for travel money for the trip to the state spelling bee.
Dr. Ray Wallace, UAFS provost and senior vice chancellor, awarded vouchers for college scholarships of $2,000, $500 and $250 to the first through third place winners, if they choose to attend UAFS.