“Imagine School’s Ivana Moore did it last year with the word adieu. She did it again last night with propaganda and decaffeinated: she won the district-wide spelling bee and is headed to the regional competition in Jacksonville on Jan. 19.
Moore, a 6th grader at Imagine and a member of the Flagler Youth Orchestra, needed only five rounds to prevail in a field of 18 champion spellers from eight schools—a champion from each school from the 5th to the 8th grade (see the chart below). Belle Terre Elementary’s Sandra Defalco, a 5th grader, was the first runner-up, followed by Old Kings Elementary’s Olivia Taylor, also a 5th grader. The competition was swift this time, lasting barely half an hour at the Buddy Taylor Middle School cafeteria Thursday evening.
Blame it on the words: from first to last, they were none too easy—no let-up, no mercy. Seriously: toxicosis, anyone? (The word means “any diseased condition caused by poisoning”—including poisonous words. Narcoleptic? Rhombus? (That would be an equilateral parallelogram. Not that anyone past the age of calculus could possibly want to fool with any equilaterals of any sort.)
With Christine Zappas as presenter (Diane Dyer, the usual presenter, had a family emergency), and a malfunctioning microphone that left Zappas unleashing words unplugged, perhaps to the detriment of a few students who may have misheard certain words, the 18 contestants sat in two rows of chairs on the cafeteria stage and, one by one, walked up to a microphone in the center to enunciate. This being the age when sizes vary greatly, some, like Wadsworth 6th grader Dominick Read, had to will himself close to the microphone, while others, like Imagine’s Diana Solokhina and Old Kings’ Elizabeth Kirconnell, made the microphone stand look small. . .
So that final four was left standing, though the way the competition was designed, the students who had stumbled before them didn’t walk off the stage. All 18 were still in their seats as the following two rounds were called, and the real nerve-wracking moments unfolded.
Olivia heard papyrus. She took care of that. Angelica got jalapeño and got burned—and who wouldn’t? Sandra, who was wearing gold-colored pants, took care of Olympiad, and Ivana handled affectation.
The final round was a flash. Olivia got non-negotiable, a compound word that should have been negotiated out of the rotation. Hypochondria defeated Sandra. That left Ivana with having to spell the next two words correctly to win it all: had she spelled one wrong, the round would have continued with all three students. But that’s when Ivana showed she could handle propaganda and anything else thrown at her, as long as it was decaffeinated.
Even Juan Valdez would have been proud. Congratulations.”
Article published on February 4, 2011 by FlaglerLive.com