It was dog-eat-dog on Friday night, October 17—or, rather, dog-spell-dog—as seven teams of expert spellers competed for 1st place in the very first Kendal Spelling Bee. Chris Mitchell served in the dual role of Word Announcer and Pronouncer. Pam Mitchell—doing her best Vanna White impersonation—served as the Provider of All Answers with each new word. Shamya Walker was Emcee, providing both humor and scores. The judges were Llyn Clague and Jan Maier. Ellen Ottstadt watched the clock as time-keeper.
Round 1 saw the teams of The Stellar Spellers, CVS (so named for the first letter in each team member’s name), and The Spell Demons competing . . .
followed by Round 2 in which the competing teams were: Ten Thousand Words, The Websters, The Wanna-Bees, and The Schzzeleppy Szzpellers (no, no one there, other then the team members, could pronounce it).
The winners of Rounds 1 and 2 then went on to the Big Spell-Off. The two finalists were teams CVS and Ten Thousand Words.
The teams battled it out unstintingly, as Pam Mitchell provided the answers.
And the winning team—with the word yttrium—was . . .
Team Ten Thousands Words, shown here happily admiring their handsome trophies.
An exciting evening—and one of great fun! Stay tuned . . . maybe there’ll be another soon. Start practicing now.
Photos by Harry Bloomfeld