by Dennis Dalman
Ingrid Johnson, a Sartell seventh-grader, won third place in the regional central Minnesota Spelling Bee on Feb. 11.
Sponsored by Resource Training & Solutions, the spelling event took place in Ritsche Auditorium on the campus of St. Cloud State University. Close to 40 young students competed at the event.
“I was surprised,” Johnson told the Newsleaders in an interview. “I didn’t expect to get that far. I was happy. Very happy.”
Among the words Johnson was asked to spell were the following: implicative, sashay, ellipse, graham, debilitate, scrumptiously, reprisal, scandal and constabulary.
At the Feb. 11 Regional Spelling Bee, the first-place winner was Emmaline Bushman, an eighth-grader at St. John’s Prep School; and the second-place winner was Thisbe Truax, a sixth-grader at St. Cloud’s South Junior High School.
Ingrid Johnson, the daughter of Katie and Todd Johnson, is a seventh-grader at Sartell Middle School. She also recently placed second individually in the regional Math Counts competition. Her team took second place in the Best Team category. Johnson and her team went to state competition, March 7 and 8.
How does one practice to compete in a spelling bee?
“I studied word lists they (event organizers) send to us,” Johnson said. “And I make educated guesses based on the word roots of some words.”
The spelling-bee judges, if requested by a competitor student, will give an example of the word used in a sentence so students will have some idea of the context in which the word is used. The definitions of the words are also given by the judges.
Besides her obviously keen intelligence, Johnson has many other talents too. She participates in the school band, orchestra and choir, and she is member of the robotics team. The subjects she most enjoys are reading, art and of course music.
“I just finished a book called ‘Like Rings of Fire’,’’ she said. “It’s a book about dragons and how they save the world multiple times.”
One of Johnson’s goals is to become an author.
Scripps Bee
The Scripps National Spelling Bee was founded in 1925 as a consolidation of numerous local spelling bees organized by “The Courier-Journal” newspaper in Louisville, Ken. Its first winner was a Kentucky student, Frank Neuhauser, who spelled correctly the word “gladiolus” (a type of flower) to become the champ.
The E.W. Scripps Co. acquired the rights to the event in 1941.
The national spelling bee has been held every year except for 1943–1945 due to World War II and 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The national competition takes place in the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Md. just outside of Washington, D.C.
The national competition is open for students who have not yet completed the eighth grade, not yet reached their 15th birthday and who have not previously won in the national spelling bee.
The grand prizes for the national champion is $50,000, a cup trophy, a $2,500 savings bond, a reference library from Merriam-Webster, $400 in reference works and a lifetime membership to Britannica Encyclopedia online.
All participants receive Webster’s third new international unabridged dictionary on CD-ROM form.
The mission of the event is not just to encourage children to spell correctly but also to enlarge their vocabularies and to widen their knowledge of the English language.
Last year, the Bee champion was Bruhat Soma of St. Petersburg, Fla., whose winning word was “abseil.” That word (pronounced “ahb-sale) is a synonym for “rappelling” – that is, someone descending by using a rope down the face of a steep rock, cliff or building.
Ingrid Johnson (right), a seventh-grader at Sartell Middle School, earned third place in the Central Minnesota Regional Spelling Bee. The first-place champion is Emmaline Bushman (left), an eighth-grader at St. John’s Prep School; and the second-place winner is Thisbe Truax, a sixth-grader at St. Cloud’s South Junior High School.
