Minnesota Teen Wins Scripps Spelling Bee; Friday June 1 10:25 AM ET
dailynews.yahoo.com
By GREG TOPPO, AP Education Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Talk about survivors.
Sean Conley, a mostly home-schooled 13-year-old from Shakopee, Minn., outlasted 247 competitors over three marathon days, squeezing the juice from Greek and Latin roots along the way to winning the 2001 Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee.
Sean took home the engraved gold cup and $10,000 grand prize by lasting through 16 rounds, in the process putting the pronouncer through his paces as he asked almost every time for origins of the word to be spelled. First runner-up in last year's bee, he finished, appropriately, by spelling ``succedaneum,'' which means ``one that succeeds to the place of another.''
He also met and had his picture taken with President Bush (news - web sites) on Friday, just before the president boarded Marine One for a trip to Massachusetts.
Home-schooled until this school year, Sean, now attending private school, said he studied nearly half his life for the chance to win the spelling bee and learned 20,000 words in the process. This week, he pulled from his hat 16 of the most jaw-dropping ones, among them: ``tropophilous,'' ``schadenfreude,'' ``aleatoric'' and ``epexegesis.''
Near the end, he went word-for-word for five breathless rounds with another survivor, Kristin Hawkins, a soft-spoken Virginia eighth-grader who, like Sean, was participating in the national bee for the third time.
Kristin rattled off such words as ``hamartia'' and ``orthoepy'' as if she were spelling her name. But then she stumbled over ``resipiscence,'' meaning a change of mind or heart.
Sean almost didn't make it past the fourth round himself, grappling for several excruciating minutes with ``inesculent,'' a synonym for inedible. With his index finger, he wrote the word in the air and on his name placard nearly a dozen times, reluctantly spelling the word only when pressed by judges - and then he let the last three letters hang in the air for what seemed an eternity.
Later, the intense eighth-grader said it was the hardest word he faced. The air-writing, he said, helps when ``I can't see the whole thing in my head.''
Home-schoolers did themselves proud in this year's competition, filling 25 of the 248 slots. Sean's mother, Bry Conley, said her son would resume being schooled at home this fall, skipping ninth grade in the bargain.
She said the years of training for the spelling bee were part of Sean's education - at his request.
``That's what you do as a home-school parent,'' she said. ``You facilitate opportunities for your child.''
Spelling bee director Paige Kimble said this year's word list was a bit more challenging than in past years, and at times it showed.
Students grimaced at the likes of ``byssinosis,'' ``myrmecologist'' and ``mansuetude'' - and they were in the first round.
It didn't help that the final day of competition was broadcast live on ESPN, the cable sports network. In fact, as soon as the broadcast began Thursday, the first seven students misspelled their words.
True to their roots, ESPN announcers treated the event like a sort of grammarians' Grand Nationals, complete with sweaty-forehead close-ups and play-by-play banter filling the silences.
When Abhijith Eswarappa casually spelled ``nosocomial,'' commentator Katie Kerwin McCrimmon, the 1979 spelling bee champ, said, ``He has just dazzled us with his talent today!''
After Michael Hessenauer picked apart the Greek roots of ``polyptych,'' then correctly spelled it, McCrimmon chimed in, ``Those root words are incredibly helpful - he's done his homework, and it's paying off now.''
``I won't argue with you,'' her co-host replied gamely.
Ari Goldstein, 14, of Uniondale, N.Y., followed two sisters to the national competition, but his mother, Mona, said her boy didn't rely on God-given talents.
``He was the one who was not born a speller, and he put effort in,'' she said. ``It goes to show you that if you really work at something, you can accomplish a lot.''
Ari made it through five rounds, spelling ``hippotigrine'' and ``obtundent'' before flubbing ``gneiss'' in the sixth round.
Another New Yorker, Lee Germino, 14, studied for two hours each night in preparation for the competition, writing down words so his father could quiz him.
Autographing a child's program after he was eliminated - ``mussitation'' got him in the fifth round - Lee said he prayed onstage, but it didn't work so well.
``I said a couple of `Hail Marys,''' he said. ``Since I didn't know the word, I didn't want to dally on the stage for a long time. I just took a deep breath and made an educated guess.''
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