May 23, 2019
Palm Beach Post
Eighth-grader Tommy Cherry can solve a Rubik’s Cube blindfolded 28 times out of 30, but the prospect of misspelling a word has the Boynton area teen really nervous. It is the Scripps National Spelling Bee — the one broadcast every year on ESPN — after all.
He has been there once before, but ‘affricate’ took him out in the third round.
This year, Cherry, a student at Christa McAuliffe Middle, is aiming to be among the last 50 standing in the race for not only bragging rights, but also $50,000. But he’ll have loads of competition, including two other walking dictionaries from Palm Beach County: Bak Middle School student Arik Karim, 12, another veteran of the national competition, and Emma Chopin, 12, a sixth-grader from Rosarian Academy.
Cherry, 13, won the region’s spelling competition, landing him an all-expense paid trip to the big show along with 270 other regional winners. Karim and Chopin are also spelling champs — winning for their schools and earning two of 294 special invitations from bee organizers (last year’s winner was an invitation recipient).
The road to last year’s national bee was almost breezy for Cherry, who had been competitively spelling since third grade. But only after he arrived in the nation’s capitol last year did he realize how many others were top notch.
The realization sent him to Merriam-Webster with even more zeal after he returned home — eschewing even the lure of Universal’s Islands of Adventure in favor of cramming more words into his mental library.
“I set a goal and then I want to beat it,” Cherry said. A veteran of so many pressure-cooker show downs involving mad math skills, cup stacking and all manner of Rubik’s Cube challenges (timed, blindfolded, with his feet), a cloud of doubt sometimes forms.
Competitive spelling is fierce. He’s seen it online, watched spellers rip through words in a blink. “It kinda harms my confidence for making it to the semi-finals,” he said.
Cherry said his dad wants him to “Stop and smell the roses, man.” As an eighth-grader, though, it’s Cherry’s last shot.
Bak’s Karim also had a taste of nationals and couldn’t wait to claim a spot among this year’s 162 returning spellers. He can’t remember the word with which he won his school bee this year, but he can’t forget the one that sent him home from nationals last year.
“It was ‘massasauga,’” Karim said. “It’s a type of snake. I forgot the first part of the word. That was really disappointing.”
Lately, he’s been churning through spelling lists, memorizing 250 to 500 words a day. He has a favorite: Gemtlichkeit.
That’s German for geniality or friendliness, reports Karim, who wants to be a doctor one day, but is currently working on balancing spelling, school work, debate and speech and chess.
He estimates spelling is the hardest, because of the “thousands and thousands” of words that could possibly come up in this competition. “That is definitely a huge undertaking,”
The first time Emma Chopin faced the spelling bee challenge, she papered the house with word-filled index cards. “The whole bathroom, the closet was covered.”
Chopin has won her school bee and gone on to regionals twice. This year, she got far enough that her mom figured why not seek one of those special invitations?
“She’s a natural with words,” Rebecca Chopin said. “She’s a prolific reader.”
This year, the sixth-grader ditched the index cards and is relying on her family to quiz her — extensively.
Chopin can’t recall which words tripped her up or propelled her forward in past bees. And with the nation’s best student spellers preparing to square-off, Chopin says, “I’m not very nervous.” What is she looking forward to? “I’d like to see the White House.”
