Bethlehem Lutheran sends first Northern Nevada spelling champ to Washington

Words descending from the French language might be a little trickier for Bethlehem Lutheran School sixth grader Arabella Mendoza to spell because of their pronunciation. But practice makes perfect.

Mendoza is her school’s first champion of the Nevada State Spelling Bee sponsored by the Public Education Foundation and the first to represent Northern Nevada in more than 10 years, according to the school’s spelling bee coordinator Anna Maschke.

“I could say it was really nerve-racking,” Mendoza said of the regional contest. “I was really nervous because I was against 34 other people and they were the best of their schools. You don’t know if they studied more than you or they’ve done this more than you, so you don’t know if their skill level is more than yours.”

Mendoza, whose winning word at the regional bee was “adjugate,” the mathematical transpose of a matrix in which each element is replaced by its cofactor, competed for 11 rounds.

Mendoza’s teacher, Maschke, who teaches fifth, sixth and seventh grade and oversees the seventh grade homeroom, has coordinated the school’s spelling bee for seven of her eight years with the school. Maschke said Bethlehem Lutheran is thrilled to see Mendoza represent not only Bethlehem Lutheran but Northern Nevada this year.

“We’ve had kids go to the regional bee and place in the top five, but we’ve never had a winner before,” she said. “So this is our first to go to Washington. It is very, very exciting.”

The 2024 Scripps National Spelling Bee takes place May 28 through 30. Mendoza will attend with her family and participate in a week of activities with regional winners from other states and territories before competing in the finals.

Mendoza’s counterpart from Southern Nevada, Bella-Clair Nguyen of St. Francis de Sales School in Las Vegas, also is expected to attend. Both have won other prizes after competing in the regional bees. They received the Samuel Louis Sugarman Award, a 2024 U.S. Mint Proof Set provided by Jay Sugarman, chairman and CEO of iStar Financial, in honor of his father. Mendoza will receive the prize this summer. They’ll also receive one year subscriptions to online resources including Britannica Online Premium from Encyclopedia Britannica, Merriam-Webster Unabridged Online, Epic Family and Tynker.

The national competition is open to students no older than 16 and who have not promoted beyond the eighth grade and must be attending schools officially enrolled with the program in the current academic year.

School spelling bees before the national competition were able to enroll as of Aug. 22, 2023, and could download the Bee’s Word Club app or an eBook version of the Words of the Champions booklet on Amazon.com for their students participating, if they chose. Words for annual local bees and the Scripps National Spelling Bee (SNSB) competition lists come from the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary. The SNSB also lists specific rules about pronouncer errors, misunderstandings about the exchanging of information and disqualification for reasons other than error.

“They don’t have to say this letter has an accent … or it has hyphens, and you don’t need to do capitals,” she said. “You just need to do the letters in the correct order. But once you say a letter, you can’t go back and correct yourself. If you are spelling something and you say the third letter and it was wrong, you can’t go back and correct yourself.”

Foreign words often can be tricky. Mendoza said she recently had learned how to spell the title of Ireland’s prime minister, their Taoiseach. It’s taken time to learn words of foreign origin or places and often devotes up to an hour a day to study her words.

But spellers participating in most bees now have an advantage working in the digital age. Using apps on their phones or laptops can be a useful method of studying about 4,000 words on a school list. Mendoza could type in words, ask for a definition or fill in the blank.

“It’s much easier to do and (hearing) the pronunciation helps,” she said. “It’s easier to ask for the part of speech.”

Bethlehem Lutheran is eager to send Mendoza and her family on for the experience, Maschke said, and they’ve been fundraising by selling gift baskets in support of their champion. After winning the regional competition, she receives a stipend for airfare and hotel and registration will be covered for her trip to Washington, D.C., so the school is helping with other costs.

“It’s kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Maschke said.