WASHINGTON — The words “moraine” and “parquetry” were no match for a pair of Colorado students who both survived the second and third rounds of the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Wednesday and qualified for a spot Thursday in the finals.
Both Sylvie Lamontagne, 13, and Cameron Keith, 10, entered the competition this year with high hopes. Last year, Sylvie, of Creighton Middle School in Lakewood, tied for ninth place, and Cameron, of the Friends’ School Boulder, is looking to make a deep run after being the youngest speller in the 2015 contest.
“I feel pretty good about making the third day again but it remains to be seen if I do as good as I did last year,” said Sylvie, who said she planned to study Wednesday “basically until I go to bed.”
In preparing for the bee, Sylvie said she’s tried to focus on recognizing root words by “cerastes,” a desert-dwelling viper. She said she missed a root word in cerastes that could have helped her.
“If you know the root it doesn’t do you any good if you can’t recognize it in a word,” said Sylvie, who in the second round correctly spelled “moraine,” which is a terms for rocks and sediment carried by glaciers.
She and Cameron are among the 285 spellers who competed for a place in the finals. To get there, Sylvie and Cameron had to correctly spell their words onstage in rounds two and three — getting it wrong meant an automatic elimination — and do well enough on a written test.
That first-round test, taken Tuesday, was comprised of multiple-choice questions on both spelling and vocabulary. Bee officials used the results to cull to 45 students a field of 171 spellers who survived rounds two and three.
Cameron said going through the Bee experience in 2015 has helped him.
“Last year there were so many older kids it was overwhelming,” said Cameron, who wears two arrowhead necklaces for good luck. “This year itap so much better.”
In the second round this year, he correctly spelled “parquetry” — blocks of wood arranged in a geometric pattern, usually for flooring or furniture. Cameron had to work through some trouble in the third round, however, and nearly ran out of time before quickly punching out the letters for “cameist,” a crafter of small stones or shells.
The success of Sylvie and Cameron prompted some bragging from U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and Cory Gardner of Colorado.
“Euphoric. E-U-P-H-O-R-I-C. We’re euphoric that CO’s Sylvie Lamontagne and Cameron Keith advanced to the @ScrippsBee finals!” Bennet tweeted.
Meanwhile Gardner — himself a regional spelling champion in the fifth grade — had some choice words for the two finalists.
“While some of Sylvie and Cameron’s peers are rather pococurante about spelling, I know that just as I am no Laodicean when it comes to politics, they too are passionate about their skill,” Gardner said in a statement that included words that were past winners in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
