BY SYDNEY HOOVER
Eudora Middle School named eighth grader Max Nokes its 2020 Spelling Bee champion.
Nokes won the spelling bee Friday after 14 regular rounds and several championship rounds. Nokes correctly spelled periodically and withers in the final round to become the champion.
“I was the winner in fifth grade, and I wanted to get back and redeem myself,” Nokes said.
All 15 participants correctly spelled words through the first two rounds. By round 12, there were still five participants remaining. After round 14, the bee moved into championship rounds.
Nokes said he spent “quite a bit” of time studying words right before the spelling bee. He said the most nerve-wracking part of the bee was during the championship rounds, in which he and sixth grader Jack Cline went back and forth several times.
Nokes will go on to the Douglas County Spelling Bee, where he will compete against other Douglas County elementary and middle schoolers.
The audience included students and teachers, and Nokes’s parents were also in attendance.
“This is as intense to me as a sporting event,” said Max’s mom, Connie Nokes, who also won the spelling bee when she was in school.
The EMS Spelling Bee consisted of 15 participants. Students qualified for the spelling bee through a spelling test given in their English Language Arts classes. The tests included words from a list from the Scripps National Spelling Bee word list, and the top five scores in each grade qualified for the spelling bee.
“I think they all did a great job. They really took a lot of the tips that their [teachers] gave them about slowing down, asking for the parts of speech and a sentence,” said eighth grade English Language Arts teacher Leslie Schrader, who pronounced the words during the bee. “We could tell that they really put some effort into it.”
Reach Sydney Hoover at eudoratimes@gmail.com.
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