Zane Allinger earns top-speller spot

Thirteen-year-old Zane Allinger had to spell out the word describing the pounding sensation in his heart Wednesday to earn the top prize at the Spokane Valley Spelling Bee.

“Palpitation” was the winning word in the battle for the trophy at the 33rd annual event held at Bowdish Middle School. The bee is held each year for students in grades six through eight from the Spokane Valley.

Allinger, an eighth-grader at Evergreen Middle School, beat Matt Bauman from Centennial Middle School to become top speller.

“I’ve always been good at spelling,” Allinger said. “I tried to figure out why words are spelled the way they are.”

Even though he holds the title of top speller, Allinger is not alone in his spelling prowess. Good spellers seem to be plentiful in the Valley. The 11 student competitors from Wednesday’s event didn’t blink at spelling words like “oligotrophic,” “imperturbation,” and “circumscissile.”

They went round for round with hard to spell words, eliciting “oohs” and “aahs” from the crowd.

Words from the first seven rounds came from a list given to the students to study ahead of time. After that, the words may have been a little easier to spell, but students may not have seen them before.

Words are picked at random from three master lists, rotated each year. If a sixth-grade student returns as a seventh-grader, they wouldn’t hear the same word twice.

Except for Bauman, who sped through words that might have tripped others up, like “sophomore.”

“You’re pretty confident; have you been here before?” joked teacher Kyle Schafer, the organizer for the event.

Bauman hadn’t been in the hot seat before, but his siblings had. A Bauman has competed in seven of the last eight spelling bees.

“Sophomore” is the word that got his sister, Haley Bauman, 16, out a few years back. Haley Bauman is now a junior at West Valley High School. Bauman’s oldest brother, Austin Bauman, 19, missed the word “oscillate,” another word from Wednesday’s event.

“I saw him give a little smile when they said those words,” the Baumans’ mother, Mary, said.

But it’s not over for the Bauman family. Centennial sixth-grader Katelyn Bauman went round for round with her brother at the qualifying event at their school to earn a spot at the championship this year.

“He finally got me out with ‘archaism,’ ” Katelyn Bauman said.

There’s always next year.