50 students face off in Navajo Times/Office of Diné Youth Final Regional Spelling Bee

By Jan-Mikael Patterson
Navajo Times

FORT DEFIANCE, Ariz. – Ada Bernal, 11, a student at Kaibeto Boarding School, sighed in disappointment as she looked at her cellphone Thursday at the Navajo Times/Office of Diné Youth Final Regional Spelling Bee at ODY’s multi-purpose building here.

“I’m bummed,” she huffed. “They didn’t call my name because I didn’t pass the vocabulary test.”

Before the bee began, all contestants were called to the main floor to be seated in the chairs placed before the judges. Then those called by name were told to stay, while others were to return to the bleachers. Some students left the room emotional. There were 50 contestants in total, but only 19 stayed seated.

Before spellers are permitted to compete, a vocabulary test is conducted. Each agency spelling bee contest conducts a vocabulary test to participate in the bee. The test is printed and has 25 multiple-choice questions for students to answer. Per Nathanial Natonabah of ODY-Fort Defiance, the percentage of students who pass fluctuates depending on the number of competitors. For Thursday, the percentage was 60%.

Bernal and a fellow schoolmate, fourth-grader Peyton Holmes, 10, didn’t pass.

“I was too nervous,” Holmes said, about competing, so she was relieved.

“I didn’t understand most of the questions (on the test),” Bernal said. “I didn’t even know what ‘jambalaya’ meant.”

“Oh, I thought that was an instrument,” Holmes giggled, responding to Bernal.

Bernal and Holmes traveled with eighth-grader Joaquin Gallegos. Dedra Begay, a business technician, and Marie Jensen, a seventh-/eighth-grade teacher at Kaibeto Boarding School, chaperoned them.

Part of Bernal’s disappointment was also the fact that she woke up early to get ready and left her school at 3 a.m. with her chaperones.

“I got up at 2 a.m. and drove in from Tuba City to the school (in Kaibeto, Arizona),” Jensen said.

“Same, but I came in from Navajo Mountain,” Begay said. “That’s about an hour for the both of us to get to the school.”

Since the two were not competing, Jensen and Begay were hopeful Gallegos would win.

“He studied a lot,” said Jensen, his teacher. “He’s been working at it, so I hope he does good.”

Sighs of relief

Once the spelling bee began, the two onlookers were visibly nervous, clasping and clenching their hands. Each time Gallegos spelled a word correctly, there were two sighs of relief.

Many of the chaperones and families who were in attendance were also nervous, so they had to maintain their excitement when their speller did well.

“Ugh, my stomach was in knots,” Jensen said.

Then came the 6th round.

Ding!

Gallegos was rung out for misspelling “hoagie.”

Jensen, Begay, Holmes, and Bernal were silent as they watched him sit in the back row of chairs. When the round ended, everyone applauded the contestants for their best efforts.

“Now, we have to go get him a hoagie,” chuckled Begay and Jensen, both nearly saying it simultaneously.

This would have been Bernal’s first time participating. Holmes competed last year and learned to hate the word “maturity.”

“That was the word I misspelled,” Holmes said.

“The reason why I joined was because of my bestie, Audrianna Hoschain,” Bernal said. “She’s been my best friend since kindergarten. But she got out in the second round (at the Navajo Times/Office of Diné Youth’s Western Navajo Regional Spelling Bee).

“I was like, ‘Dang!’” she recalled. It’s safe to say that Bernal has her reasons to be disappointed—her best friend was not at her side, and she had to wake up early to make the drive out from Kaibeto only to fail the vocabulary test. But then there’s the upside: she and Holmes missed a day of school and took a day trip.

“You have two more early morning trips to get ready for the next spelling bee,” Jensen said to Bernal. “You got time to get ready. You, too (Holmes). You have four more years of early mornings left for the upcoming spelling bees.”

Final four

As the spelling continued, the number of contestants dwindled from 19 to the final four top spellers by round five. They were Shynelle Joe, a sixth grader from Tsaile Public School; Ava Nez, an eighth grader from Tséhootsooí Middle School; Russell Weber, a fourth grader from Mesa Elementary School; and Taya Hosteen, an eighth grader from Tsaile Public School.

In the seventh round, two remained from the same school: Joe and Hosteen battled it out intensely until round 21, when Hosteen misspelled “foozle,” which means a clumsy or botched attempt at something like a golf shot.

The level of intensity was like watching a basketball game where each team scored, earning one point, until one shot was missed.

Joe won with the final word — “rankles.”

She was shocked and speechless.

When asked what was going through her mind when she was alone with Hosteen, she said, “Give me an easy word. Please, give me an easy word.”

Her mother, Sherri Joe, was gleaming with pride.

“It was tough,” Sherri said. “Especially with her back to us. I was nervous the whole time. There were all kinds of (emotions) going on. It was intense, especially since I couldn’t see her face. Her back was to us, so I couldn’t see if she was doing OK.”

The Joes live in Lukachukai, Arizona. The champ has been studying vocabulary since being given a list of words from the school and challenged herself.

“She studied harder words,” her mother said. “I knew she was capable of this because she does well in school.”

Still visibly shocked by the outcome, Shynelle didn’t have much else to say because the moment was still surreal.

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