BY CLIFF SMELLEY
Telegraph Staff Writer
The final word of the 2022-23 Bradford County School District Spelling Bee was “stamina,” which proved to be fitting as the final two contestants went 15 rounds before Bradford Middle School’s Nicholas Salazar won the event, which was held Feb. 16 at the Bradford High School auditorium.
Salazar, a seventh-grader, has now earned the right to advance to the 79th Annual First Coast Regional Spelling Championship, which will be held March 31 at 10 a.m. at LaVilla School of the Arts in Jacksonville. The cost for him and his parents to attend will be taken care of by the Bradford County Education Foundation, which sponsors the district spelling bee as well as the school-level events.
“We are very pleased to do,” said BCEF President Cheryl Canova. “We are very proud of these young people who are here.”
BCEF provided the district championship and runner-up trophies to Salazar and Amelia Cooper, a fifth-grader at Starke Elementary School.
Besides Salazar and Cooper, the other participants were Kinsley Hendricks, Anniston Morrell and Dawson Sullivan from Lawtey Elementary, Brayden Hart, Trevor Holland, Danielle McClenaghan and Sebastian Patterson from Southside Elementary and Robert Dalager and Virginia Hancock from Starke Elementary.
Bradford Middle School’s Jade Brown and Braylyn Johnson also qualified for the district spelling bee, but did not participate.
The event consisted of five rounds before Salazar and Cooper battled it out for 15. Dalager, Hart, Hendricks, Holland, McClenaghan, Patterson and Sullivan all advanced past the first round with Salazar and Cooper. The third round consisted of Cooper, Hart, Hendricks, Patterson, Salazar and Sullivan, while advancing to the fourth round were Cooper, Hart, Hendricks, Patterson and Salazar.
Cooper successfully spelled “reactionary,” while Salazar spelled “incentive” to survive and advance to the fifth round.
Once the event got down to two participants, if one misspelled a word, the other participant would have to spell two words successfully to win. Otherwise, the two would advance to another round.
Of course, if both spelled their given words correctly, they advanced to another round. That happened in six of the remaining 15 rounds, with Cooper spelling “moxie,” “forfend,” “ferret,” “venue” and “summary” and Salazar spelling “pedigree,” “angora,” “hostile,” “futility,” “attendee” and “centipede.”
In the final round, Salazar successfully spelled “affluent” and then “stamina” to earn the championship trophy.
BCEF provided all 11 participants with goody bags, which included gift cards donated by McDonald’s. (McDonald’s also donated teacher bags.) The all-volunteer organization also pays the registration costs for the county’s schools to participate in all of the spelling bees and provides the judges for the district and school-level events.
The judges at the district spelling bee were Canova, Vorease Jones and Lila Sellars.
Troy Appling served as the event’s pronouncer.
School coordinators, who helped prepare students for the spelling be, were Tammy Adams (Southside), Lauren Barbaro (Bradford Middle), Melissa Hines (Starke) and Debbie Parmenter (Lawtey).
The results of the school-level spelling bees were as follows:
—Lawtey Elementary: Anniston Morrell (winner), Dawson Sullivan (runner-up), Kinsley Hendricks (third place), James Gallion (alternate).
—Southside Elementary: Danielle McClenaghan (winner), Brayden Hart (runner-up), Trevor Holland (third place), Sebastian Patterson (alternate).
—Starke Elementary: Amelia Cooper (winner), Robert Dalager (runner-up), Virginia Hancock (third place), Callan Phillips (alternate).
—Bradford Middle: Jade Brown (winner), Bradylyn Johnson (runner-up), Nicholas Salazar (third place).
