Diné eliminated in second round of Scripps bee

OXON HILL, Md.

Malihini.

That’s the word 10-year-old Kelvin Winney will always remember.

Billed as the youngest winner in the history of the Navajo Nation Spelling Bee, Kelvin, of Chinle, Ariz., was one of 285 spellers from across the country to compete this week in the 88th annual Scripps National Spelling Bee. He was eliminated in the second round Wednesday when he misspelled malihini, a Hawaiian word that means “newcomer or stranger among the people of Hawaii.”

“I got nervous,” Kelvin said during an interview after the round. “I didn’t recognize the word and that made me nervous, so I just took a guess.”

But Kelvin’s journey to the country’s most prestigious spelling competition was paved with successes at the local level. During the Navajo Nation Spelling Bee in March, Kelvin correctly spelled the word virtuosas.

A fifth-grader at Canyon de Chelly Elementary School, Kelvin aced other local competitions with the words trajectory, plateau, falsetto, cynergy, chanteur, dross and quibble, earning him the chance to represent the Navajo Nation in Washington.

The Navajo Times hosts and sponsors the Navajo Nation Spelling Bee and pays all travel expenses for the champion speller and a chaperone, to attend the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Students in grades 4th through 8th from schools located all across the Navajo Nation, begin studying for the spelling bee in August. They participate in spelling bees at their schools and then advance to the agency and regional spelling bees before they qualify for and compete in the Navajo Times – Navajo Nation Spelling Bee in mid-March of each school year.

A science whiz, Kelvin volunteers as a junior ranger at Canyon de Chelly and already has his sights set on attending the University of Arizona, where he hopes to study electrical engineering. He attributes his knack for spelling to a general love of learning.

“I like vocabulary,” he said. “It fits in with science.”

Set against the backdrop of National Harbor, a picturesque community along the Potomac River just sound of Washington, D.C., this year’s bee attracted the best young spellers in the United States and seven foreign nations. The competition was held in front of a large studio audience at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center and broadcast live on ESPN.

“This was the biggest crowd I ever saw,” Kelvin said. “If they had told me I would be on TV before I went on stage, I would have been even more nervous.”

Kelvin was one of more than 11 million students who competed at some level of the spelling bee this year. Only a tiny fraction of those spellers advanced to the national stage, where they tackled words that make most adults pause, said Jacques Bailly, official pronouncer and winner of the 1980 bee.

Yet, word by word, these young spellers climb to new heights, Bailly said.

“There’s no Nobel Prize in spelling,” he said. “But still, it’s basically a gateway skill that opens your world to every single discipline of human endeavor.”

Spellers come to the national competition having studied a list of 1,500 words ahead of time. While on stage, they can ask a variety of questions to help pin down the correct spelling, including the etymology of the word, its language of origin, part of speech, alternate pronunciations, homonyms or use in a sentence.

Meanwhile, a panel of four judges listens as spellers enunciate every letter. Spellers are eliminated based on their on-stage performances, as well as off-stage spelling and vocabulary tests.

The difficulty increases as spellers advance. During the final rounds, words are picked straight from the dictionary. At stake for the nation’s top speller is $30,000 in cash, a $2,500 savings bond and $1,200 in reference works from Encyclopedia Britannica.

Bee organizers estimate that about 20 spellers really make a career out of preparing for the competition, spending a considerable amount of time every day for months ahead of time.

“That’s not the case with most of them,” said Paige Kimball, executive director of the bee. For most of the contestants, it’s a time to be honored for their achievements, a “chance to shine,” she said.

Although he didn’t advance to the final round, Kelvin is still celebrating his journey to the spelling bee. Shortly after Kelvin won the Navajo bee, his mom launched a crowd-funding campaign to send the entire family to the national competition.

The family raised more than $10,000, said Kelvin’s mom, Nora McKerry. Kelvin spelled in front of an audience that included his parents, grandparents, two older siblings and a 10-year-old nephew.

“This is about trying and participating,” McKerry said of the bee. “It’s not about the destination, but about the journey. This is Kelvin’s first year at the national bee. He still has a few more to go, and if he starts studying now we’ll all be here again next year.”

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