Brownsville girl wins spelling bee

TACLOBAO SPELLS EFFULGENT CORRECTLY TO TAKE REGIONAL COMPETITION

WESLACO — Effulgent was not among the hundreds of words Blessing Taclobao studied in anticipation of the annual Rio Grande Valley Spelling Bee on Saturday.

So when the word came up as the one Taclobao needed to spell to win the bee and a trip to Washington, D.C., she thought, “Oh, no.”

But in spelling bees, you can’t possibly know every word in the dictionary.

Sometimes, you just have to let it rip and hope for the best.

“I just guessed the spelling,” Taclobao said.

It turned out to be a good guess.

In the bee’s 14th round, the 12-year-old from Brownsville won the chance to compete in the 80th annual Scripps National Spelling Bee in the nation’s capital.

After correctly spelling effulgent, Taclobao didn’t know she won until the three judges gave their nods of approval.

She received a standing ovation, mouthed a silent “Wow” and took a deep breath.

“I felt really surprised because I guessed at the last word,” said Taclobao, who was cool and collected after the win.

Her closest competitor, runner-up Sumit Gogia of Harlingen, was disappointed but not as distraught as some of the other contestants.

Gogia, who placed fourth in a previous Valleywide spelling bee, got tripped up on the word aerobicize, paving the way for Taclobao’s win.

“I felt like I was almost there, but I fell a little short,” Gogia said.

Still, Gogia managed to edge out 45 other competitors ages 15 and younger.

And all of those competitors either won or placed highly in spelling bees at their schools, allowing them to participate in Saturday’s event at South Texas College’s Weslaco campus.

The 19th annual Valley Spelling Bee was sponsored by The Monitor and its sister newspapers, The Brownsville Herald and Valley Morning Star.

“These are champions in their own right before they even come here,” said Sandy McGehee, director of educational services for The Herald and one of the event’s organizers. “But we can only have one winner who can go to Washington, D.C. It’s intense.”

At Saturday’s bee, it wasn’t clear who was more tense, the partici-pants or their parents and teachers, who filled one of STC’s larger lecture halls.

The children, elementary and middle school students from Cam-eron, Hidalgo and Starr counties, mostly sat slumped over in their seats on the stage, waiting their turn.

Some prayed, while others stared at the floor. When they were eliminated from the competition, some cried or sulked over to their parents in the audience. When they spelled a word correctly, they typically did little rejoicing, because they were already thinking about their next turn.

Their adult chaperones, meanwhile, treated the event like a tennis match, staying silent except when a child missed a word by one letter or correctly spelled a word that no one knew. On those occasions, a breathy kind of nervousness made itself heard among the crowd.

As the event progressed, the words, of course, became difficult.

Among the words spelled right in the later rounds were “interrogative,” “tawdrily,” “antiphonal” and “poultice.”

But participates failed to spell “valise,” “autobahn,” “Bolshevik,” “ephemeral” and “eligible.”

Nisha Sanchez, a student at Edinburg’s Brewster Elementary, correctly spelled three words before she lost on “ostentatious.”

“My mom quizzed me on words every night,” said Sanchez. “I like it and it’s fun.”

Richard Sanchez was very proud of his daughter, partly because she was more proficient than he ever was.

“In elementary school I hated spelling bees because I was always the first one out,” Richard said.

Despite Saturday’s loss, Nisha said she’ll continue to compete, and she could get some inspiration from this year’s winner, who placed second and third in previous Valley-wide spelling bees.

For Taclobao, a student at Brownsville’s Vela Middle School, the trip to D.C. at the end of May is a great reward for so many hours of study.

She’ll get to compete against the country’s best spellers, but she also wants to see the city’s many museums and monuments.

“I really need a vacation,” Taclobao said. “We haven’t been anywhere in a while.”

CAN YOU SPELL…

The following words stumped participants in the annual Rio Grande Valley Spelling Bee. If you can correctly spell some of them, you might want to consider entering next year’s event. But remember, you must be 15 years old or younger (and in elementary or middle school) to compete.

— autobahn

— maestro

— ostentatious

— elixir

— egregious

— parallel

— eligible

— amenity

— valise

— taciturn

— spurious