Published on November 12, 2008

Editors note:  Maël LeScouëzec won the 2010 Vermont Spelling Bee.

The Craftsbury spellers pose for a team portrait. In the front row, from left to right are Maël LeScouëzec and Sarah Dunbar. In the back row are Matthew Allen, Alex Vetere, Kyle Adams, Meghan Brown, and coach Kathleen Duffell. Photo by Joseph Gresser

CRAFTSBURY COMMON — The six members of the spelling team were paired off and tucked into assorted nooks at Craftsbury Academy Monday afternoon.  Armed with sheets listing words they might face in competition, they practiced for the state championship match.

Taking a few moments of valuable practice time, the fifth and sixth grade students patiently explained the rules of competition to a visitor, and even shared a couple of the tricks of the trade.

The Craftsbury regulars are all sixth graders:  Maël LeScouëzec, Sarah Dunbar, Kyle Adams and Meghan Brown.  Fifth-grader Matthew Allen, and sixth-grader Alex Vetere are the alternates who stand by as very ready reserves.

Fresh off their win in the Northeast Regional round of the state team spelling bee, the Craftsbury spellers hope to win it all in Northfield Saturday.  The Craftsbury team squeaked by Danville to take the regional title.  They also faced teams from Blue Mountain School in Wells River, Glover Community School, Bradford Elementary School, and St. Johnsbury Town School.

Team spelling bees, unlike the better known individual matches, are decided by point totals.  Team members can misspell words without knocking their side out of competition.  The group with the best score at the end of play, wins.

Competitors face two classes of words.  Regular words, which are good for two points when properly spelled, come from an official list of about 700 words.  Bonus words are twice as valuable.  Students have no way of knowing what bonus words they might face.

Craftsbury won its regional title on the basis of a single correctly spelled bonus word —cavalry.

Kyle was the hero of the day, according to his teammates.  “If he spelled it right we won.  If he spelled it wrong we got second place,” Matthew said.

Strangely enough, Kyle claims not to have excelled in the sport before joining the team.  “I used to be a bad speller, but I got better when I started,” he said.

Asked why he started if he wasn’t a good speller, Kyle sighed at having another interviewer ask a frequently repeated question.  “Give him the same answer,” advised Kathleen Duffell, the team’s coach.

“It was mostly because my friends were doing it,” Kyle said.

Everyone on the team seemed in agreement that Maël is the star speller.  This may be because he finished third in last year’s statewide individual spelling competition.

The students explained that individual competitors are allowed to ask for more clues than team players can.  They can ask what part of speech a word is, and they can also ask what language the word comes from.

In team competition a player can ask for the word to be pronounced a second time, for the word to be used in a sentence, and for the word’s definition.

Meghan explained that hearing the word in a sentence can help determine the part of speech.  With a word with an “us” sound at the end, that can be important, she explained.  If it’s an adjective it usually with end with an “ous,” a noun will end with “us,” Meghan said.

While the Craftsbury team still has a lot of work to accomplish before the weekend, it can’t be said to lack confidence.

“Do we get medals if we win the state?” Kyle asked his friends.

One opined that the prize might be a trophy, but Kyle wasn’t having that.

“I’m going to wear that medal every day,” he announced.