Dark horse team of walk-ons ride to victory in Kiwanis Club spelling bee
Mar. 24—Move over NCAA. The real competition went down at the hotly-contested adult spelling bee hosted by the Waynesville Kiwanis Club last weekend.
Don't be fooled by the baggies of complimentary popcorn and cheerful banter over scrumptious baked ziti before the games began. This packed hall of spellers, with pens at the ready as the buzzer sounded, were a fearsome bunch.
Spelling aficionados aren't what the Kiwanis Club hopes for, however. Teams can "buy back" misspelled words to stay in the game. The more words the teams miss, the better.
As the spelling rendezvous wore on and pockets ran dry, teams gradually folded. A costumed bee with a stinger mounted to a broomstick made rounds through the hall to bust the helium balloons that hovered above each table. The pop would ricochet around the room, signifying another team biting the dust.
In a particularly rowdy corner of the gym at First United Methodist Church, three teams of Tuscola teachers were locked in a face-off of their own. Meanwhile, a vivacious team going by the moniker BEE Witched had mastered the art of intimidation, going berserk with jazz hands in the air for all to see with each correct word.
The stakes were high as the valiant spellers headed into the final sudden death round, when buybacks are banned.
Ultimately, a dark horse team of three walk-on players rode to victory. Strangers before that night, the threesome proved their spelling prowess — never once pulling out their checkbook.
Most of the night's spellers were amateurs — hailing from a local business or organization fielding a team out of an acquisitive civic duty to support the Kiwanis Club. But the three champions turned out wholly due to their spelling forte.
"I am one of those geeky grade school kids who was good at the spelling bee," said Beth Carlisle of the winning team.
Carlisle gave an acknowledgement where credit was due, however.
"This guy was our MVP," she said with a nod to her eponymous teammate. "There were a couple words I'd never heard of. But he knew them, nailed them, bam. He's at a different level."
Micah Newman, the team's ringer, saw the spelling bee announced in the ubiquitous Mountaineer, and showed up to throw his hat in the ring.
"If I see it in print once, that's usually enough. It just registers," Newman said. "If you do enough reading, you've seen enough words in print."
And he sees plenty of the written word as an editor and proofreader of science text books, giving him an empirical eye for spelling.
Newman's been an avid speller since childhood, however.
"I was pretty smug about it, too. In the fourth grade, every quarter we had a spelling bee, and I won the first three, but lost the fourth — and I still remember the name of the person who beat me," he said of the fateful occurrence.
The team nearly always arrived at a consensus in their spellings. A stalemate only arose twice, but was quickly settled.
"I said I was pretty sure I knew the right spelling, and they believed me," said Newman, who is otherwise reticent by nature.
While none of the players were milquetoasts, spelling isn't a chief pastime for most — so luckily misspelled words and the resulting buy backs were plentiful. The perennial event netted another year of fundraising for Kiwanis Club projects that benefit youth in Haywood County.
"The Bee was a great success, raising $7,000 to be used for grants to deserving schools, teachers, and students of Haywood County," said Pat Ryan, chair of the Kiwanis spelling bee.
