On Thursday January 12, 2017, 12 students from Troy got down to "buzzness" at the Troy City Schools Spelling Bee.
As friends, family, teachers and even administrators gathered to encourage the building winners, the night started off easy with words like diary, monsoon, fiend, giraffe and hassock, but by round 5 the words escalated to conjecture, alamo and hyphen.
By round 8, there were only three contestants who had spelled all their words correctly. When pronouncer, Mr. Rasey, read the word "orthodox" the field was reduced to two.
Suhas Nallam, of Hook Elementary claimed first place by correctly spelling the word "hydraulic". Logan Boehringer, of Kyle Elementary, came in second place after incorrectly spelling the word "obsequious". Rounding out the top three was Deanna Rohlfs of Forest Elementary.
Nallam, whose favorite subject is math, said he practiced spelling every night for roughly two hours with the help of his parents who would quiz him.
Being up on stage can be quite nerve wracking with all the lights shining and people watching. "I like to focus on one specific thing, not a person though, but something like the table the judges are sitting at," Nallam said.
Students who competed were champions of their individual buildings. The top 12 students included: Anthony Yu of Concord Elementary, Noelle Meiring of Cookson Elementary, Deanna Rohlfs of Forest Elementary, Skylar Davis of Heywood Elementary, Suhas Nallam of Hook Elementary, Logan Boehringer of Kyle Elementary, Katie Bertke of Van Cleve, Xander Covington of TJHS, Riya Patel of Miami Montessori, Sarah Huerta of St. Pats, Kiersten Swihart of Troy Christian Elementary and Marisa Williams of Troy Christian JH.
Megan Kavalauskas is a junior staff writer who was very impressed by some of the words they were able to spell.