Alexander Wins Chance at County Spelling Bee

SWAN VALLEY - Seventh grader Trista Alexander who competed against six other spellers won the Swan Valley Elementary School Spelling Bee for the second time Feb. 6. She will be attending the Missoula County Spelling Bee to be held at Sentinel High School Feb. 22 at 3:30 p.m. in Missoula. Another seventh grader Chris Auchenbach was the runner-up who will fill in for Alexander if she can not attend.

The contest is open to fifth through eighth graders. The eight spellers volunteered to be in the spelling bee. Teacher Jamie Matthew said that fifth grader Aubrey Matthew told her that she has been looking forward to competing since she started kindergarten.

Alexander said that she was excited to be going to the county spelling bee again. She thought that the word "agog" was going to end it. She said she was surprised when the judges said it was correct. She won with the word "disguise.

Last year there were nearly 50 spellers competing at the county spelling bee. Alexander said that she was nervous but another speller who used to attend Swan Valley Elementary sat near her during the competition helped ease her anxiety. She said she is not as nervous this year.

Alexander said that a classmate posed the question "why is the spelling contest called a bee? The class decided that it was a social gathering where people gathered together in a single activity.

According to spellingbee.com, it seems to be an American term that first appeared in print in 1875 but was used orally for many years before that. The word bee is used when a community comes together socially and voluntarily for the benefit of one person or family. Even though no one is certain where the word came from, some scholars think that it could have come from the Middle English word bene which means favor.