Fist bumps for all as 19 Wayne County spellers advance to regional bee

ORRVILLE − This year’s Wayne County Spelling Bee featured a “switcheroo,” which happened to be one of the words on the list at the 67th annual event.

No problem for seventh-graders Elizabeth (Ellie) Pauli and Emma Weahry of Dalton Middle School and Chippewa Junior/Senior High, respectively, as they emerged the top spellers of the night.

Pauli claims first place and Weahry is runner-up of the Tuesday evening spelldown held at Orrville High School.

But here’s the catch.

The Akron Beacon Journal, sponsor of the Regional Spelling Bee, changed the rules in 2022, making all school champions eligible to compete in its March bee that includes youngsters from four counties — Wayne, Summit, Medina and Portage. All 19 spellers at the Wayne bee will compete in the Akron Beacon Journal Regional Spelling Bee at noon March 11 in the Akron-Summit County Public Library.

In essence, the local spelldown served as a practice round for the next level of competition, said Jennifer Marrah, a consultant with the Tri-County Educational Service Center, which runs the county bee.

Elizabeth Pauli goes for the win after pronunciation glitch gets Dalton speller back in the game

The evening competition itself had its own switch when Pauli was eliminated from one of the final rounds for misspelling the word “pomposity,” and then reinstated to go on and win the championship.

Pauli told The Daily Record she was confused by the turn of events and figured the judges had mistakenly thought she spelled the word incorrectly. As it turned out, said Andrew Johnson, a Tri-County ESC consultant who was one of the judges, the word had been mispronounced for Pauli.

The glitch allowed her the opportunity to come back after misspelling it and clinch the bee by correctly spelling her final word, “brusque.”

A runoff between Weahry and Wooster Christian School’s Madison Clow resulted in Weahry becoming the runner-up by successfully spelling “arsenic.”

For Weahry, it was a repeat performance. She also came in second at last year’s county bee.

At the 2022 regional bee, she modestly recalled, “I didn’t do so great,” before amending her statement to acknowledge she placed higher than many other spellers.

Weahry plans to review her strategy before the March spelldown, perhaps adopting a technique she has seen other competitors use — first spelling a word in the air with her hand or tapping it out with her fingers on her pant leg, she said.

Pauli said she had “studied a lot with friends in the school bee” and had used an app called Word Club. She and Weahry each said they will make a renewed effort to prepare for the regional challenge.

Both admitted to being nervous and expressed concern about a couple of the words they fielded.

Pauli had to think twice about how to spell “windbreaker,” she said. One of the words that threw Weahry was “nanotechnology.”

Nicholas Kakanuru, a Wooster High School eighth grader and last year’s winner at the county level, slipped up on the word “pallor” close to the end of Tuesday’s competition. As he exited the stage when the contest was over, he gave a fist-bump to Pauli.

It was that kind of night.

“I could hear (the spellers) encouraging each other and really being kind to one another,” Marrah told the audience.