It came down to ‘folate.’ Koen Harvey knew it cold.
Submitted | Navajo Times
Koen Harvey of Tsaile Public School holds the trophy after winning the 2026 Navajo Nation Spelling Bee on March 5 at the Phil L. Thomas Performing Arts Center in Shiprock. Harvey won the title on the word “folate.”
TÓNANEESDIZÍ
The word was folate. Six letters, two syllables, a vitamin found in leafy greens. Not a particularly fearsome word, by the standards of a spelling bee that had already run 13 or 14 rounds. But when it came, Koen Harvey felt his heart start to race.
Somewhere in the audience, Calandra Begay’s fingers were going sweaty.
Begay, a special education teacher at Tsaile Public School and the sponsor who had guided Harvey to the stage of the Phil L. Thomas Performing Arts Center in Shiprock, had spent two weeks hounding her students about vocabulary practice. She had printed multiple-choice study sheets. She had tracked him through every round, marking a check beside his name after each word he spelled. Now it was down to two competitors, and she was doing her best not to look nervous – she was sitting right in Harvey’s line of sight.
Harvey steadied himself, spelled folate, and waited. When the judges confirmed it correct on March 5, he was the 2026 Navajo Nation Spelling Bee champion.
“It was like something really heavy lifted off your shoulder,” said Harvey, an eighth-grader at Tsaile Public School.
Begay felt something else lift.
To read the full article, please see the March 12, 2026, edition of the Navajo Times.
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