EDINBURG — Jie Laboriante walked up to the microphone and waited for the next word.
“Scrivener,” said John Foreman, official pronouncer of the 34th Annual Regional Rio Grande Valley Spelling Bee.
“Can you please repeat the word?” Laboriante asked as only one other student sat among the sea of numbered chairs behind her on the stage at the Edinburg Conference Center at Renaissance.
After 30 rounds, the bee was down to Laboriante, a fifth-grader at Garza Elementary School in McAllen, and Chaitanya Miana, a seventh-grader at Ringgold Middle School in Rio Grande City.
Foreman repeated the word, then read its definition and said it was a noun after being prompted by Laboriante with the questions spelling bee contestants are allowed to ask, including definitions, word origin, part of speech and alternate pronunciations.
“Scrivener. S-C-R-I-V-E-N-E-R, Scrivener,” Laboriante said.
Then the auditorium echoed with the sound of a single high-pitched “ting” from a brass bell, which indicated the word had been spelled incorrectly.
Just moments before, Miana had spelled his own Round 30 word, “follicle,” incorrectly.
Laboriante and Miana had just gone head-to-head spelling words correctly for 14 consecutive rounds.
They had conquered words such as “privatim,” with its roots in Latin, to more modern words, such as “stagflation,” a portmanteau of “stagnation” and “inflation” that was first used in 1965, according to Merriam-Webster.
Though both of them had incorrectly spelled their Round 30 words, they remained tied.
Unfazed, Laboriante returned to her seat, but rather than continuing on to the next round of words, the judges instead huddled together.
Moments later, judge Carlos Rodriguez announced he had misheard Laboriante’s spelling. She had spelled “scrivener” correctly after all.
But that wasn’t the end of it. She had to confirm her win with one more word.
“Capillary,” Foreman said.
Laboriante sailed through the word. The audience remained hushed for just a moment before erupting into applause.
“I was scared, but I was thinking, ‘I feel like that was right, though,’” Laboriante said of that moment of uncertainty that ultimately decided her first regional spelling bee win.
The win was the culmination of long nights of studying with her mom, Laboriante said. She studied as late as midnight some nights.
So, too, did Miana, who came in second place. And like Laboriante, Miana credited his successful spelling streak to nights spent practicing words with his mother.
“Study every day,” said Sebastian Saldivar, of Sullivan Science Academy in San Benito.
Saldivar placed third in the competition, his first time competing at the regional level.
“I’d never been this far, and representing all of San Benito, I was really nervous,” Saldivar said.
Though the fifth-grader didn’t win the top prize, he remained hopeful.
“I feel pretty great. I was hoping to get first, but there’s always next year,” Saldivar said.
Both Saldivar and Miana won trophies sponsored by The Monitor, the Valley Morning Star and The Brownsville Herald.
The three AIM Media Texas newspapers sponsor the spelling bee every year. This year, the event also had the support of DHR Health, which offered the use of its conference center.
As for Laboriante, she’ll soon head to Washington D.C. for the Scripps National Spelling Bee this May.
“I’m nervous and excited. I’m gonna study more, and then I’m gonna study the definitions,” Laboriante said of how she plans to prepare.
If her performance Saturday was any indication, she’ll do well at the national spelling bee.
Foreman, a professor of linguistics who has served as the official pronouncer for the RGV Spelling Bee for more than a decade, was impressed by the strategy Laboriante used during the competition.
“Some things that she did, which was very good, was she repeated the word a lot. Like, I would say it, she would say it, then she’d ask for a sentence, then she’d say the word again,” Foreman said.
Laboriante also made good use of the questions competitors are allowed to ask. And that served her especially well in the final rounds with Miana.
During Round 19, she was asked to spell “vernal.” But, as often occurred during the competition, the word sounded awfully close to a different word.
Asking for the word’s origin helped Laboriante solve the puzzle.
“Because before I knew there was a word, ‘vermeil,’ but I knew that the ‘M-I-E-L’ was French, and then the one that they gave me, ‘N-A-L’ was Latin. And they said it was Latin, so I was like, ‘Oh, it’s ‘vernal’,’” Laboriante said.
Spelling that correctly led her and Miana to continue for another dozen rounds.
And that kind of critical thinking — analyzing how a word’s language of origin impacts the spelling of prefixes, roots and suffixes — is what the regional competition is all about.
“At the school level, you get a book of words and you memorize them. … But, here it’s a matter of concepts and you have to know, well, if it’s a French word, you’re gonna have the “E-A-U” things going on,” Rodriguez, the judge and opinion editor for The Monitor and Herald, said.
“It’s good to see that a lot of kids have that kind of interest in the building blocks of language,” Rodriguez said.
Marcia Kitten, circulation sales and marketing manager for AIM Media Texas, agreed.
“Our future looks bright with these brilliant kids,” Kitten said.
“Those are future leaders, and so I think the future is bright.”
To see more of the 34th Annual Regional Rio Grande Valley Spelling Bee, check out Monitor photojournalist Joel Martinez’s full photo gallery here:
Photo Gallery: 34th Annual Regional Rio Grande Valley Spelling Bee
