NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland – The 89th Annual Scripps National Spelling Bee is in full swing this week and one brilliant Alabama girl reached the final round of the competition.
Erin Howard, an 11-year-old fifth-grader at Mountain Gap P-8 School in Huntsville, survived the preliminary rounds to make it to the top 45 spellers in the country. The competition started with 285 students, but only the best reached the finals.
During the earlier rounds, Erin, who is the only Alabamian to qualify this year, had to control her nerves and stay focused because the spellers are ordered alphabetically by state, making her Speller No. 1.
“I was hoping they would mess up and put Alaska first,” she said. “But no! Had to do it right!”
In the preliminary rounds, Erin correctly spelled some truly difficult words, including submersible, proletarian, experiential, Dantesque, expediency, gadabout, bailiwick and verity.
To make it to the finals, Erin had to correctly spell abecedarius (a poem in which first letter of every word, line, or verse follows the order of the alphabet) and tulipomania (an excessive passion or obsession for tulips).
On Thursday morning, Erin was eliminated from the competition after misspelling Cheltenham, a borough in Gloucestershire, located in southwest England. Erin’s spelling of the word was Cheltonam.
Erin’s profile on the National Spelling Bee website describes her as a “very creative person” who enjoys creating stories and her own worlds, either on paper or with friends. She is a self-described “huge nerd” because of her love of science fiction, mythology, and science, and her favorite television show is Doctor Who. Erin is also musically talented – she likes to play the piano and compose her own music. In fact, one of her compositions won first place in the Alabama Parent-Teacher Association’s Reflections competition. Erin hopes to attend Georgia Institute of Technology for college, become a pediatrician, and join Doctors Without Borders.
The Scripps Spelling Bee is the nation’s largest and longest-running educational promotion and sponsors local spelling bees across the United States and its territories, the Bahamas, Canada, Ghana, Jamaica, Japan and South Korea.
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