Stockton Grade School’s top speller is Jack Gasper

Jack Gasper is Stockton Grade School’s top speller after he correctly spelled the word “profound” to win the Stockton Grade School Spelling Bee held on Thursday, January 23rd. Jack, as well as Bodye Stithem, Cheyenne Hoeting and Garrett Billinger, will now represent Stockton at the Rooks County Spelling Bee on Monday, February 3rd beginning at 9:00 a.m. at Sacred Heart School in Plainville.

There was a total of eleven rounds of spelling to determine the champion and the three other students who claimed the top four spots. However, for the alternate, four students who went out in Round Seven were called back for a spell-off to determine this year’s alternate. They were Noah Ferguson, who withdrew from the contest, Kagan Dix, Andrew Strow and Cody Snyder. The three young men then went head-to-head with their spelling skills. After Andrew misspelled his word, “trombone,” Kagan spelled out the word “detours” which was not the word announcer Scott Bennett had pronounced. Cody went on to correctly spell “audience” and would have been named alternate, but judges Erica Dryden and Crystal Dunlap noted that they also thought the word the announcer had pronounced was “detours,” when in fact it was “deters.” So Kagan and Cody went head-to-head in four more rounds. Kagan correctly spelled “furrow” in Round Fifteen, after which Cody misspelled his word, “memorial.” Kagan then had to correctly spell a second word to win the alternate position, which he did by correctly spelling “amplify.”

The students from the fourth-through-eighth-grade representing their class in the school competition were Noah Ferguson, Cason Iwanski, Lyric Snyder, Jayana Creighton, Andrew Strow, Garrett Billinger, Jadyn Palmer, Kagan Dix, Kolt Kuhlmann, Jonathan Besperat, Ashlyn Wallace, Cody Snyder, Cheyenne Hoeting, Bodye Stithem, Skyler Turnbull, Temprance Northup, Mia Odle, Jack Gasper and Pierce Gray.

G-o-o-d l-u-c-k at the Rooks County Spelling Bee!