Charles Apple

Check out this photo from Wednesday’s opening round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington:

 

That is Rebecca Willett of Virginia Beach, the Pilot’s representative in the bee. Yes, she competed wearing a nametag that misspelled the name of her home state.

Yay, ‘Becca. Boo, Scripps.

Sadly, she faltered in the fourth round late Wednesday on the word “gastrilegous” — a word “absent from many dictionaries,” reporter Lauren Roth points out.

For a girl who has wanted to compete in the national bee since age 4, being there was a big deal. Earlier this school year, she sold an Xbox she won in a spelling bee to buy dictionaries and spelling software. She included spelling exercises in a daily routine that already included hours of piano practice.

This photo, by the Pilot’s Delores Johnson, was our B-section lede art today. Minus the little red arrow, of course.

Read our story here:
http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=125741&ran=16001

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 7:35 am and is filed under Amusing stuff, Virginian-Pilot, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.