Historically the word bee has been used to describe a get-together for communal work, like a husking bee or a quilting bee.

The earliest known evidence of the phrase spelling bee in print dates back to 1850, although an earlier name, spelling match, has been traced back to 1808. In 1908, the National Education Association held what it called the "first national spelling bee."

In 1941, the Scripps Howard News Service acquired sponsorship of the program, and the name changed to the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee. Later, the name was shortened to the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Today, this is the Super Bowl of spelling competition. But you need to start at the grassroots level to get to the playoffs and that was recently done at Superior Elementary School. Before COVID, spelling bees have traditionally been held on a stage in the school gymnasiums but 2021 was different.

The students were supervised as they participated on-line. Teacher Angie Hopwood and co-teacher Chelsea Nygaard spent two weeks working with the students before the final day.

“The first week was spent explaining how the platform was going to work since this was new for everyone,” said Hopwood.

Students and teachers would log-in and once inside the spelling bee program, the audible word would be spoken and on the side bar, an explanation of the word. If the student wanted to hear the word used in a sentence, they would ‘click’ for this to happen.

The second week was competing as close to the final competition as it could be done, and students were expected to practice on their own to become more familiar with the format and the words. All students were individually supervised in the school at their computers to ease the temptation of not playing fair and all fifth-eighth grade students had the same words.

For the actual event, the fifth and seventh grades were in the room on the evening of Tuesday, Jan. 19 and the sixth and eighth grade students the next evening. This was done for social distancing at the recommendation of Barb Jasper, Superior School Nurse.

After the wringing of the hands and tapping of fingers and scuffling of feet under the chairs was completed, the winners were eighth grader Abigail Wheeler as the champion.

Liam Wheeler, Abigail’s brother and a sixth grader, was second with third place honors going to eighth grader Addison Martin.

Abigail never missed a word and was 100% correct on every spelling. Liam was buffaloed with the word, ‘unprepossessing.’

A wonderful twist of luck is that Abigail was the champion last year but because of the pandemic, the remainder of the state spelling bees were cancelled, as well as the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

So, Abigail has another crack at the big trophy next month. Each school champion will compete at the state level using the Scripps Online Testing Platform.

“We had until Feb. 10 to hold our local spelling bee”, said Hopwood. “But with the continued uncertainties we’re all facing, we held ours early to be prepared for whatever else may come at us.”

Unless there is a change of dates, the state spelling bee will be on-line from Feb. 22-27.