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The Buzz from the Bee...

May 30, 2008 1:56 PM

WASHINGTON, D.C.

It’s 6am here in Washington, D.C, and the warm, spring sun is slowly starting to rise above the nation’s capitol. The windows of the White House are dark, and the leader of the free word is, no doubt, still asleep. But a few blocks away, inside the Hyatt Hotel, it’s buzzing with activity. Everywhere you look, colonies of little people are scattered about, tucked into every corner. They feverishly tear through big books, filled with even bigger words. A sense of excitement fills the air, along with a touch of urgency. These baby Einsteins are getting some last minute practice in, because today is the big game. The main event. The moment they’ve been preparing for all year.  Hours from now, they’ll take to the stage to compete in the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Two-hundred and eighty-eight children between the ages of eight and fifteen arrived here earlier this week to compete in the popular event, now in its eighty-first year. The political propaganda that typically fills the air around here was replaced by an orchestra of adjectives and adverbs, nouns and pronouns. Upon receiving a word to spell, the kids act as detectives, verbally dissecting words and using clues like origin and meaning to solve the puzzle of how they’re spelled. After written tests and preliminary rounds were completed, the field was whittled down. Forty-five spellers remain, and tonight the last speller standing will be crowned the champion. This is the pinnacle of academic achievement for these students who have spent a full-year studying for this event.

Many people have wondered why the Bee is broadcast on ESPN (and ABC). The answer is simple. It is truly one of the greatest spectator “sports” on television, and a competition in every sense of the word. Ok, so instead of athletes, they’re more like math-letes, who possess little physical brawn, but enormous brains. And they take to the field…or stage, rather…they don their thinking caps instead of baseball hats. It's an event where emotions run high, and pain runs deep. The pressure is intense, particularly when they’re up at bat, waiting for a word to spell. A swing and a miss can occasionally lead to an emotional outburst of tears. And a home run warrants high-fives all around. 

The competition even has its own version of an umpire….the big, bad, bell, that  transmits a noise nobody wants to hear. It only sounds when someone misspells a word, therefore knocking them out of the competition. One speller, 13-year old Josephine Kao, described hearing the bell as being stung by a bee. “It definitely hurts,” she told me. One of her competitors, Scott Remer, said he has grown to dislike the sound so much that even the elevators bells in our hotel make him cringe. 

At the end of the night, the last speller standing is presented with a big, shiny trophy. And, let me tell you, it pays to be smart. In addition to the hardware, the champ receives over $40,000 in cash and prizes. With the skyrocketing price of college, those dollars will no doubt come in handy.

Some of these kids are a bit quirky, while others are socially well-rounded. But one thing is certain - they are the most amazing young people you will ever meet. Honest, earnest, and driven...they are all-around great kids. And in a place like Washington, quality people are hard to come by sometimes.

May 30, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (0)

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