By Bill Straub
Scripps Howard News Service
Carolyn Dube is still trying to figure out where her 14-year-old daughter, Madeline Stevens, gets her obvious talent for spelling.
“It’s beyond anything I could do,’’ the proud mom said after her Madeline, an eighth grader at Batesville (Ind.) Middle School survived the opening public round of the 2009 Scripps National Spelling Bee. “I try spelling along with the kids and I so don’t deserve to be up there.’’
But Madeline is another story. She passed her first challenge, successfully spelling “homicide’’ for the judges, and is looking to move on to Thursday’s final day of competition.
“I am very excited,’’ Madeline acknowledged after the opening public test of her abilities. “I was kind of nervous but not as much now. Everything was about what I expected.’’
Despite her young age, Madeline already has proved to be multi-talented, playing oboe in her school's band for nearly four years while leading the school’s academic team. A straight-A student, she describes herself as a huge fan of the Beatles and aspires to become an author some day.
The 2009 Scripps National Spelling Bee, the 82nd edition of the venerable face-off, has attracted a record 293 champion spellers from across the nation to the Grand Hyatt Hotel in downtown Washington DC, each hoping to emerge from the three-day event as the nation’s most proficient speller. The contest ends Thursday evening with the finals televised on ABC-TV.
The victor earns, among other things, $30,000 and an engraved trophy. The Bee is administered on a non-for-profit basis by the E.W. Scripps Co., which also happens to be the parent of WCPO-TV channel 9 in Cincinnati, the outfit sponsoring Madeline and a second local speller, Tino Delamerced, of The Summit Country Day School in Cincinnati. A review of past winners shows that no one from Cincinnati has ever finished on top.
Madeline is not a newcomer to Washington DC – she visited on a class trip recently and she has a grandmother who lives in the area. But she is taking advantage of what the nation’s capitol has to offer, including a visitor to the ever-popular Spy Museum, since arriving on Sunday. And she hopes to stick around at the event for awhile.
“Unless the words get really hard, I don’t know.’’
Mrs. Dube, who is here with her husband, Dave Stevens, and other family members, said she is impressed with the spirit projected by the Bee participants and competing families.
“All the kids are great,’’ she said. “You know they all want to win but they’re all very supportive of each other. They’re really nice kids.’’
