SBHS senior Benjamin Vogel was no stranger to spelling bees.
“ I won a few spelling bees in elementary school. I used to love spelling when I was little,” said Vogel.
Still, when one of the moderators gave him the winning word, “disseminate”, he started to sweat.
The senior found the other contestants’ words easy.
“But then when it was my turn, there were words I had never heard before,” said the senior.
The final word was one of them. He quickly thought of two ways to spell it, “diseminate” or “disseminate”, and went with the one he was more confident with.
“D-I-S-S-E-M-I-N-A-T-E. Disseminate,” he said.
The media center erupted with cheers. The 18-year-old was a winner of the National English Honors Society’s Spelling Bee.
SBHS’s National English Honors Society is a relatively new club, only getting its start in the second semester of last year. The event on December 11th only raised $20, but fundraising was not the only reason the club decided to host the spelling bee. NEHS wanted to run this event in order to get their feet wet, showing the school that they’re here, and ready to get the ball rolling.
“It’s a fun way to advertise and get our message out into the school. And it’s just a really good way to get people academically involved in a fun event,” said the club president, Adriana Monterrey.
This might have been the first spelling bee, but it most definitely will not be the last. Monterrey believes the next spelling bee will take place sometime in the second semester. She hopes this event will become a tradition for the school.
“I definitely do want it to live on… even if it doesn’t exceed expectations, I want [the club] to keep trying, because I think it’s something that could be fun, just like Freestyle Fridays became a really big thing,” she said.
Each lunch had its competition: two in A Lunch and one in B lunch. Each competition had two rounds. The first round had two different groups of contestants that each competed simultaneously. The winner from each group would move on to the next round, a semifinalist round. The entry fee was two dollars, and the winner of the semi-finalist round won a $10 Starbucks gift card.
The competitions during A-lunch were not very successful. The facilitators were ready to go when the bell rang, but 15 minutes passed and there were still no participants. The club had to run 2 different competitions in the same lunch to make up for the lost time. By the end of lunch, the competitions had five participants and two winners total. Dakota Chesser was the first winner, and Bryan Porter was the second winner.
“I was not expecting to win at all. I was actually not even anticipating participating in the first place,” said Chesser.
B lunch was more successful, as a crowd of 15 onlookers formed around the tables to spectate. There were five more participants and one more winner, for a total of 10 participants and three winners across both lunches. The winner of this lunch was Benjamin Vogel. Onlookers and competitors alike enjoyed the experience, even if they did not win.
“I was expecting it to be harder at first because at first I was getting easy words, but then it took a turn,” said finalist Pilar Pereyra. “I had a good time. It was a random but really fun activity.”
Many people avoided the media center that day because they were weary of joining the competition and potentially embarrassing themselves. This made participation relatively low. However, the scholars of South Broward are ready for the next competition, and hopes are high for the National English Honors Society.
“Next time will be bigger and better now that we broke the ice,” said club sponsor Mrs. Pistocchi.
