North Pines Student Wins Spelling Bee

Sat., Feb. 5, 2000

By Marny Lombard marnyl@spokesman.com (509) 927-2166

A North Pines Junior High School student has won the Valley Spelling Bee for the first time in its 27-year history. Eighth-grader Corey Marcoux defeated Centennial Middle School’s Austin Bauman with the word “oscillate.”

“It was a great night,” said organizer Bill Bussard. “It’s neat to get something academic into the spotlight.”

The Valley Spelling Bee is open to sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders. It was held on Thursday evening at Bowdish Junior High School. The two finalists emerged from a field of 11 contestants, who represented schools across the Spokane Valley.

Marcoux and Bauman, a seventh-grader, struggled back and forth with several words that neither spelled correctly, Bussard said. The stumpers included these: menagerie, recidivism, monotheistic, strudel, masochist, sacroiliac and pharmaceutical.

“Those are words that those young men really had fits with,” Bussard said. Bussard, a teacher at Bowdish, has coordinated the spelling bee for more than 20 years.

He compiled a master list of words several years ago, using a three-year rotation. That way, if a student makes it to the contest two out of their three years as a middle school student, there is no chance of them coming across the same words they’ve had before. His master list includes more than 1,500 words.

Despite all his years running the contest, Bussard says he’s not sure just what makes a good speller.

“Some kids visualize words. Whether it’s out there in space or on the inside of their forehead, I’m not sure,” he says. “They just have the ability to recreate it visually, letter by letter. It’s a brain specialty.”

Marcoux won a $100 savings bond. Bauman and the other entrants each won $50 savings bonds. Other top placers were Alice Hale, third, a Greenacres Junior High eighth-grader who went out on “prerequisite”; Jason Burningham, fourth, an eighth-grader from Horizon Junior High who missed “repetitious”; Dan Burke, fifth, a seventh-grader from Evergreen Junior High, who missed “unscrupulous”; and Matt Johnston, sixth, an East Valley Middle School eighth-grader who missed “secularization.”

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