Clancy Elementary School was the place to bee for Jefferson County’s best spellers last week: Thirty-five students from Boulder, Cardwell, Clancy and Montana City elementary schools showed up Wednesday night to compete in the Jefferson County Spelling Bee, and one is headed to the state spelling bee.
Ranging from the fourth through eighth grade, the number of students dwindled to 23 by the second round, to four in the third round and, finally, down to two in the fourth round. Natalie Russ and Decker Tode, both seventh-graders at Clancy Elementary School were the last two left.
Tode went first. His word was “Kaddish”—an ancient Jewish prayer. He misspelled the word, so it was up to Russ to spell not one, but two words correctly in a row.
Her first word was “hawser,” which is a thick rope or cable for mooring or towing a ship. She spelled it correctly, garnering excited applause from the audience.
After the noise died down, Jennifer Goehring, the school district clerk and the event’s pronouncer, gave Russ her second word: “linsey-woolsey.” The word means “a strong, coarse fabric with a linen or cotton warp and a woolen weft,” according to the Oxford dictionary.
The room was quiet as Russ spelled the word, and when judges Sarah Layng, Peg Hasner and Fritz Bieler held up their signs, green side facing Russ, the crowd erupted in applause. Russ herself looked stunned as she realized she won the competition.
Russ will go to the Treasure State Spelling Bee at Montana State University in Bozeman on March 12 to compete against Montana’s best spellers for a chance to go to the 2022 Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. She will compete against 69 others for the opportunity, according to the Gallatin Media Center.
“It’s my dream to be on national TV,” Tode joked upon accepting his second place medal. Tode is the alternate, and will compete if Russ is unable to.
What led to victory last week? Russ said she prepared for the spelling bee simply by studying the list of words the school provided to study.
