Those were some busy bees at the Spokesman-Review last week. On Saturday, the newspaper featured a superb front-page spread on the North Idaho Regional Spelling Bee - the only one north of Lewiston, including the greater North Idaho/eastern Washington area.

As proud sponsors of the Bee, we at The Press appreciate the efforts of the Spokesman-Review to cast a big bright light on the event and, most importantly, the kids who are competing this year. If you go back far enough, the Spokesman-Review once sponsored the event for this region. After that paper dropped the sponsorship and local educators came to us, we gladly stepped up to foot the bill, paying for the winning speller and her or his guardian to enjoy the national competition in our nation's capital at our expense.

Tomorrow at 10 a.m. will be the ninth rendition of the North Idaho event, and none would have been possible without our partners at North Idaho College. Mindy Patterson does most of the heavy lifting with manifold organizational and administrative responsibilities that begin literally the day after each spelling bee ends. Mindy took over for the ever-capable Stacy Hudson, the original Queen Bee. Our thanks go to their boss, Mark Browning, and his boss, Priscilla Bell. They've embraced the concept that we proposed almost a decade ago: A local newspaper-community college effort like this enhances literacy and numerous educational pursuits throughout North Idaho.

Back in Year One, the competition was limited to Kootenai County. But almost immediately, we heard from educators and parents throughout the north who wanted their students to have a chance to spell words like "cymotrichous" in front of a huge crowd in Washington, D.C., and a TV audience of some 4 million. So we expanded the contest and it now includes thousands of children from Benewah County north to the Canadian border, from fourth through eighth grades, in public schools, private schools and even those who are home schooled.

None of our winners has ever gotten to that national championship round, but we're not disappointed. The kids who have the talent and the courage to take turns at the microphone at NIC won many rounds of competition just to get to this point. In that sense, they're already champions several times over.

You can show your support to them tomorrow morning starting at 10 in NIC's Boswell Hall Schuler Performing Arts Center. Wear green in honor of the day's patron saint. And when the children misspell a word that you couldn't spell in your wildest dreams, it's OK to pretend you knew it all along.