Lake Bluff Eighth Graders Meet Again in Spelling Bee Finals, Trade Places

There they were again.

For students who attended last year's Spelling Bee at Lake Bluff Middle School, the only thing missing at this year's was the huge pink barrette in Kalia Thomas' hair.

But this time was meant for Bridgett Skaronea, who correctly spelled the word, vegetarian, after Thomas was unable to correctly spell the word, damageable, to capture last Friday's (Jan. 27) Spelling Bee.

Last year, Thomas correctly spelled the word, entrepreneur, to win the competition after Skaronea misspelled the word, lackadaisical.

This year's competition narrowed down to the two girls by the fifth round from what started out as a field of 10 spellers with two absent.

Skaronea wasn't surprised to see her classmate by her side.

"I kind of had a feeling it would happen. It was a funny coincidence," Skaronea said, noting she and Thomas are in the same science class at the middle school.

The two only had to endure three more rounds before Skaronea emerged the winner.

"I almost spelled the word, v-e-g-i," Skaronea said.

Skaronea said she recognized some of the words as they were read out to the contestants after studying last year's list of words that she found online.

"They didn’t give us at list this year," Skaronea said. "So I studied last year's and I studied the right list."

This will not be her first trip to the Lake County Sectional, which will be held Feb. 22. She went last year in support of Kalia.

"I’ll study and see what I can do," she said.

The rest of the students who participated in the school's spelling bee finals by winning their class contests included: sixth graders Rebecca Guo, Finn Michaelis, Whitney Perschke, and Kate Schumacher; seventh graders Matt Ackman, TJ Dasso, Nick Gulson, and Wyatt Verlen, and eight graders Anna Fifhause and Dana Mabrey.