English wins District Spelling Bee

With the correct spelling of harbinger, Aspen English became the Spelling Bee champion of the San Juan School District. The eighth grade student at Monticello High School defeated 14 challengers in a February 24 district competition.
English will be joined by runners-up Jordan Clinger and Adriana Johnson at the Regional Spelling Bee, which was held on March 2 in Moab. The event was held after the press deadline.
The winner of the regional event earns a trip to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, DC this summer.
English perfectly spelled each of the following words on her way to winning the district bee: foible, iteration, albeit, prescient, ochre, tawdry, marsupial, shebang, noxious, panacea and finally harbinger. Aspen is the daughter of Sarah and Jonathon English. 
Her top two challengers, Clinger and Johnson, both misspelled words in the tenth round. In order to determine the runner-up in the bee, both spellers came back in to battle it out, and battle it out they did!  They battled another 13 rounds before Clinger correctly spelled parfait to claim the second place trophy.
Clinger correctly spelled the following words on her way to a second place finish: modicum, aqueduct, bona fide, prima donna, quotidian, ukelele, (Yes, ukelele is spelled correctly. It has two spellings which both are correct. “ukulele”) dromedary, terra-cotta, slalom, inchoate, naugahyde, chintzy, epee, zeitgeist, reconnoiter, dilapidated, prosecute, biopsy and parfait. Jordan is a sixth grade student at Albert R. Lyman Middle School in Blanding. She is the daughter of Mitzi and Layne Nielson.
Johnson, just a fourth grade student, correctly spelled the following words on her way to a third place finish: fluctuation, guffaw, ancillary, flambé, ballyhoo, maize, obfuscate, grandeur, latke, wunderkind, steppe, surfeit, domiciled, pusillanimous, adumbrate and cordillera. Adriana is a fourth grade student at Blanding Elementary School. She is the daughter of Denise and the late Eric Johnson.
Other students who participated in the district spelling bee include Bronsen Snyder and Trevin Palmer from Blanding Elementary School, JD Keyes, Drew Westcott and Katelyn Musselman from Monticello Elementary School, Bailey Weldon, Presely Wallis, and Serina Yanito from Bluff Elementary School, Carter Redd and Ammon Ward from Albert R Lyman Middle School, and Adam Bunker and Matt Beh from Monticello High School.
It was the first time in the eight years since 2008 that the winner of the district spelling bee wasn’t a student from Albert R Lyman Middle School.