First Posted: 3/21/2015
LIMA — In the spelling bee held at Lima Central Catholic School on Saturday, a bright smile emerged on the face of Alotus Wei as the announcer gave her the word onager.
The Shawnee Middle School seventh-grader quickly spelled the word that resulted in her third consecutive win at the regional bee. It ended her long duel with Adith Joshua George, a fifth-grader from Holy Angels School in Sidney. It was a word with which she was very familiar.
“We have a club at school that we call the Onagers,” Alotus said. “I knew it right away.
She spelled that word immediately after her spelling of hierophant gave her the chance for a championship.
Alotus will now make the trip to the national spelling bee Memorial Day weekend to represent the Lima region, where she wants to try and improve on her 43rd out of 281 and 47th out of 282 finishes the last two years.
Alotus attributed her spelling prowess to “studying and I like to read a lot.”
Ask if she was sweating it out as the words became progressively harder as the field began to narrow, Alotus said, “Yeah, like, the last 10 words that I spelled.”
For Adith, it was his second straight year finishing runner-up. He finally bowed out on the word, mangosteen.
However, he still had a great time.
“I got that word and thought, ‘What am I going to do,’” he said, smiling. Adith said he still has three more shots and will keep trying to earn the trip to the nation’s capitol.
The other four finalists were Nathan Hurtig, Lauren Bergman, Nobel Zhou and Emily Birkemeier. Nathan, Nobel, Adith and Alotus were locked as the final four for several rounds. The match took nearly three and a half hours. Tuckahoe, lederhosen and maleta were just several of the words that the final four pounded out to keep it interesting.
“I was a little nervous the first few rounds,” said Nobel, who was down to the final three.
Nathan from Ada schools was last year’s third-place finisher and was happy with his final four finish. He said he will try hard to get first next year.
