By CORINNE MESSER
The Progress
The Clark County School District (CCSD) held its district-wide spelling bee in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Nov. 15. Local 6th grader Caleb Boss, from W. Mack Lyon Middle School (MLMS), qualified to attend the event and made it into the top 7. Now he will be moving on to the televised CCSD Finals on Wednesday, Dec. 7 at the Vegas PBS studio.
To qualify for the semi-finals Boss first had to complete a spelling test including 20 word. Students who got all of them right moved on.
“Then we did a tie-breaker sheet because I and one other classmate made it through,” Boss said in an interview with The Progress.
A qualifier round had Boss spelling another sheet with 35 spelling words and 10 vocabulary words that his English teacher administered to him
“It’s been a long time since we had a student get this far,” commented Paula Chappell, English Department Chair at MLMS.
Also, representing the other grades, Tamryn Taylor was the top 7th-grade spelling bee winner; and Quinn-Abbey Hobbs was winner for the 8th grade. They won overall at MLMS, but didn’t qualify to attend the semi-finals in Las Vegas.
The spellers all went to the PBS studio where they were filmed. Moderated by Nate Tannenbaum, the students stepped up to a microphone and spelled the requested spelling word. If the word was correctly spelled, a green card would be held up; if not, a red card was raised.
The first round got down to only 10 students. The 2nd round finalized the seven who would attend the upcoming finals.
Boss didn’t miss any of the words.
This was Boss’ first spelling bee experience. He said he has loved spelling and reading for a long time. He feels spelling comes easily for him because he reads a lot and that is what prepared him for this experience.
When asked if he was nervous at the semi-finals, Boss said, “Yes, definitely!”
MLMS Principal, Jaydel Wilson attended CCSD’s spelling semi-finals with Boss.
“Besides being a great student, Boss is a super nice individual as well,” said Principal Wilson. “We are all excited for him! When you see him, ask him a hard word to spell to prepare for finals.”
