MORGANTOWN — Lockdown. L-O-C-K-D-O-W-N, lockdown.
Which is what won’t be happening next month for the annual Monongalia County Schools Spelling Bee.
After COVID-19 derailed it last year, the word-spree for students from grades 5-8 will be back, in abbreviated form, Jan. 5 at the annex of the school district’s central office on South High Street.
Brian Kiehl, the district’s nutritional services director who also organizes and coordinates the bee, said safety will be the word of the day for this outing.
One student apiece from the county’s 16 elementary and middle schools will be compete, he said.
The audience will be scaled down, also, with just one parent or other caregiver allowed.
“We were packing auditoriums with the spelling bee before COVID,” Kiehl said.
“We’d have moms and dads, and grandparents and little brothers and sisters. We don’t want to limit it, but we have to be careful.”
One thing that won’t be limited is the pool of words that will ripple before the competitors.
More than 1 million words currently reside in the English vocabulary, and more than a few owe their origins to Latin and Old English.
There are the Dutch derivatives, and the French and German carryovers as well.
Even Yiddish is in there, if you look hard enough.
The fortunate winners next month will go on to regional competition, with a chance for word-turn on the national stage – if COVID allows – at the Scripps National Bee in June.
That event will be aired from Washington, D.C., on the ION and Bounce networks.
You may also add longevity to the bee-descriptors, if you prefer.
The national bee goes back to 1925, when a Kentucky newspaper started hosting competitions for word-minded youngsters across the Bluegrass State.
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