After 11 rounds, a first-year contestant was named Wood County’s top speller.
Aaron Mejiritski, a sixth-grader at Bowling Green Middle School, won the top prize Saturday after
correctly spelling imam and then autopsy.
Several of the contestants stumbled after not taking time to write the word before spelling it.
That is what happened to Kalee Moore, who in the 11th round was given the word participant but started it
with “parc.”
That mistake allowed Mejiritski to take the title in the Wood County Spelling Bee, which was sponsored by
and held at the Wood County Educational Service Center.
Moore, a seventh-grader at Eastwood, said she would have been able to continue if she had written her
word down. She said she knew most of the words and “probably would not have gotten it wrong” if she had
taken the time to spell participant out on paper.
“It felt like a lot of the words that were asked were words I studied or were similar,” Mejiritski said.
He then admitted he didn’t do much studying — maybe two days — however, “I thought I got easier words
than others.”
He breezed through the last five rounds with scenario, amnesia, mongrel, trajectory and musicale, and
then the final two.
Neither he nor apparently his family expected him to win.
“It feels overwhelming,” said his mother, Kate Mejiritski. “I didn’t think he would win, although I hoped
he would do well.”
Mejiritski, Moore and Zachary Buschmann, of Lake schools, were the only three left after the seventh
round, then Buschmann went out after misspelling Kremlin.
Mejiritski and the remaining top-six finishers will compete at the Northwest Ohio Championship Bee on
March 11 at Owens Community College.
The winner from there goes on to the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.
Finishing in a three-way tie for fourth place were Aubrey Nyiri from Bowling Green, Emma Finley from
Eastwood and Matthew Brinkman from St. Aloysius, who all went out in the sixth round.
Finishing in third place was Buschmann, who went out in the eighth round.
In the eighth, ninth and 10th rounds, Mejiritski correctly spelled mongrel, trajectory and musicale while
Moore was correct with arsenal, syntax and relevant.
“There was a round when the words got tough,” said Aaron Bailey, who coordinated the event.
That was the fourth round, in which nine contestants got bumped out.
Those who advanced correctly spelled words including misanthropy, rotunda, harpsichord and fennel.
But words like piazza, polymer, castanets, desperado and obsequious were stumbled over.
Thirty students competed in this year’s bee.
