It used to be that if you needed help – with your rent, your gas bill, your grocery bill, or your abusive spouse – figuring out whom to call for that help was nearly as complicated as the problem itself.Kaelyn Bender will represent northeast Indiana and northwest Ohio at the Scripps National Spelling Bee at the end of May.
Bender, an eighth-grader at St. Mary of the Assumption School in Avilla, won the 59th Annual Journal Gazette Regional Spelling Bee Saturday, correctly spelling "legislation."
Don't let the championship word fool you – to get to the 16th round, Bender correctly spelled words such as "obsequious," "bureaucracy," and "koan." In the 15th round, Bender correctly spelled "escalator," while Liana Reinhard misspelled "germane." Reinhard is an eighth-grader at Kingdom Academy in Wells County.
Bender also won the regional spelling bee last year and made it to the third round of the national bee. Her regional win comes with a copy of Webster's Third New International Dictionary, the $100 Samuel Louis Sugarman Award, a one-year subscription to Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, and an all-expenses paid trip for herself and an adult to the national bee in Washington D.C.
For more on this story see Sunday's print edition of The Journal Gazette or return to www.journalgazette.net after 3 a.m. Sunday.
