UPPER FREEHOLD: Students compete in 3rd annual Spelling Bee

Two-time champion Julian Tsang heads to regional competition

By Joanne Degnan, Managing Editor

   UPPER FREEHOLD — He stood several inches taller and spoke with a deeper voice than his last time on stage, but Julian Tsang’s keen skills as a champion speller hadn’t changed in the least.
   For the second year in a row, Julian won the annual Stone Bridge Middle School Spelling Bee, this time besting 22 other students in grades four to seven in a friendly, albeit nerve-wracking, competition lasting two hours and 21 rounds. Fifth-grader Deven Kinney placed second, and sixth-grader Elizabeth Olshanetsky finished third.
   Julian, a seventh-grader, now advances to the regional spelldown at Monmouth University on March 11 in his quest to eventually make it to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., in June. Last year, as a SBMS sixth-grader, Julian finished 10th in that regional competition in Long Branch.
   ”I’ve been studying hard this past year,” Julian said.
   ”It’s cut into my video-game time for sure, but it’s worth it,” he said with a hint of a mischievous smile.
   The evening began with 23 of Stone Bridge’s best spellers fidgeting in folding chairs beneath the glare of the stage lights. Principal Mark Guterl and PTA President Vanessa DePompo, seated at a desk in front of the stage, served as judges with a 5-pound dictionary at their fingertips to resolve any potential dispute.
   Teacher Chris Scaturo served as emcee, announcing the spelling words from a list provided by Scripps. Whenever students requested, Mr. Scaturo also gave the word’s definition, language of origin and used it in the context of a sentence.
   With relatively easy words in the early rounds such as “family,” “camera,” “nitpick,” students confidently stepped up to the microphone. When Mr. Scaturo asked students, as the contest rules required, if they had given their “final answer,” some were so exuberantly self-assured a simple “yes” wouldn’t do.
   ”Yepper-ooonie!” “Indeed!” and “That it is, sir!” were just some of their jaunty replies.
   By Round 7, however, the spelling words were becoming more difficult, the mood more serious and the responses more tentative. Several students began using their fingers to trace the letters of spelling words such as “suspicion” and “elaborative” on their hands before responding, and many asked Mr. Scaturo to repeat a word or its definition multiple times.
   Whenever a student struggled with spelling a word, the rest of the contestants sat frozen in their metal chairs with pained expressions on their faces. If the hesitant student at the microphone spelled the word correctly, the other contestants burst into spontaneous applause with the audience.
   In Round 13 fifth-grader C.J. Buchanan stumbled on the word “herbaceous,” and the contest was whittled down to the final three contestants: Julian, Deven and Elizabeth.
   By the time Round 17 began, Mr. Scaturo already had exhausted his list of words and had switched to the Scripps’ alternate list, which included challenges such as “nonchalance,” “hokum” and “cayenne.”
   ”You’ve gotten further than I ever would have,” Mr. Guterl told the three finalists at the start of Round 18 as the audience laughed along with his attempt to break the tension.
   By Round 19, only the two boys were left on stage. When Deven misspelled “hokum,” it appeared to be over, but then Julian flubbed “cayenne,” which gave Deven another shot because the contest rules require the winner to also spell his word in that round correctly, plus a final championship word as well.
   Deven’s respite was short-lived, however. The fifth-grader made a mistake spelling “luscious,” allowing Julian to prevail in Round 20 with his word, “electioneer,” and finally his championship word, “exfoliate,” in Round 21.
   As Mr. Scaturo pronounced Julian the winner, Deven was the first one across the stage to congratulate him and shake his hand. Afterward, as the contestants posed together for the parental paparazzi and congratulated one another, Kaileigh could be heard telling Julian she was sure he was headed for Harvard one day.
   Perhaps, but for now, Julian says he has set his sights on Monmouth University where eight weeks from now, he’ll be under the stage lights again representing Stone Bridge Middle School in the regional competition.