SVES spelling bee stuns seniors

The San Vicente Elementary School senior class experienced a stunning reversal of fortune from their performance in the school’s Spelling Bee held last year by being eliminated from the competition on Wednesday, Jan. 19.

By the time there were only six students left from a field of 24 participants, all the 6th graders had been eliminated from competition.

Reigning Little Miss CNMI Queen Hope Gomez was one of four remaining 4th grade contestants after all the seniors were eliminated and there were but two remaining 5th graders vying for the honor of representing San Vicente in the inter-island Micronesian competition.

The 4th grade contingent, however, failed to effect a complete upset. Fifth grader Edu Banaag managed to hang on to the finals, besting 4th grader Jorge Anton Ardos in the process. Young Banaag will compete with other Micronesian students for the opportunity to represent the region in Washington DC later this year.

All these, however, might be academic after it was found out that the first and second place winners neither have the requisite travel papers to visit U.S. territories other than the CNMI without a U.S. visa.

Last year’s 6th grader Nathan Taitano won the SVES competition with then 5th grader Vira Starr Cucal as runner-up. Now in 6th grade, Cucal was one of the favorites to earn the title of school champion, but she tripped early on with the word “lancet.”

SVES viceprincipal James Rayphand read the words that the contestants spelled. He conceded that he had to skip a few words from the contest list by the time he got to the Advanced column since a lot of the words were of foreign origin, and not commonly nor regularly used in the English language.

“Some of the words,” he said, “I would not normally know how to use in a sentence. Nor would they likely be the kind of words I would use.”

Fifteen-year veteran teacher and current School librarian Richard Gramlich, and 6th grade Social Studies teacher Jaime Vergara, assisted in determining word pronunciation.

Organizing and managing the affair were 6th Grade teachers Ma. Theresa Camacho (Language Arts), Rose Adams (Science), and Cristina Yohannan (Mathematics). Marsha Ariola (School Counselor), Eric Engelskjen (Computer Lab), and Feli Lifoifoi (Reading Teacher) served as the panel of judges.

This came as schools across the Commonwealth began paring off their aspirants to the Scripps and Pacific Daily News-sponsored Spelling Bee competition that would be held on Guam this coming Spring.

Earlier during the School Assembly, Gomez exhorted her classmates and schoolmates to give generously to the PSS Tsunami Assistance fund. Assembly emcee Donovan Tudela asked the SVES Canaries, before calling Gomez to the stage, if they were a caring student body. He got a resounding affirmative response.

The tsunami fund was established as a response to Gov. Juan N. Babauta’s call for every person in the CNMI to at least share a dollar of their means to the victims of the recent Indian Ocean tsunami. More than a dozen national shorelines were affected. Aceh province in Indonesia, which was already in the midst of a civil strife, was the hardest hit, with an unknown number casualties due to limited access of government officials and aid workers.