Iowan moves ahead in spelling bee

One of Iowa’s two entrants in the national spelling bee is still in the running after the second round of competition. Fourteen-year-old Chelsey Bohr, an eighth-grader at Clay Central-Everly, made it through the first round but was bumped Wednesday afternoon. Iowa’s other entrant, 13-year-old Jonathan Hahn, goes into today still in the running. William Dolan is a staffer at the Scripps-Howard Spelling Bee going on in the nation’s capital. Dolan explains the first round is done out loud so each gets that experience of standing at the mike in front of a crowd, but the second round is done as a 25-word written test to reduce the time — he explains as the bee’s grown and spellers get more sophisticated, they were taking more time per word. There were 251 spellers to begin with, sponsored by local newspapers. Each won 75-dollars, a hundred-dollar savings bond and a commemorative watch just for making it to the national meet. Spellers who move on to the second round get $125 and the money increases till they get to the top seven contestants. The final winner of the national bee gets twelve-thousand dollars cash, a thousand-dollar savings bond, a reference library, a set of encyclopedias, and a set of “Great Books of the Western World.” Would-be contest spellers who want to get familiar can go to the website for study materials and can even listen to audio of the contest’s veteran announcer giving words and their definitions.You can follow the contestants yourself at www.spellingbee.com