HARLINGEN — Speechless.
That was Ethan Taw’s first reaction when he learned he spelled “rabbinic” correctly on Saturday and won the 33rd Annual Rio Grande Valley Regional Spelling Bee.
“I didn’t believe it and I doubted it,” said Ethan, 11, a sixth grader at Calvary Christian School in Harlingen.
This year’s spelling bee attracted about 35 young spellers from throughout the Valley, said Marcia Kitten, circulation, sales and marketing manager for AIM Media Texas, which presented the event. AIM Media Texas is the parent company of The Monitor, Valley Morning Star and The Brownsville Herald.
“This year marks our first virtual spelling bee,” Kitten said. “Although we would prefer to have had an in-person spelling bee, we were excited to be able to conduct the spelling bee virtually throughout the Rio Grande Valley.”
Kitten said students logged in remotely from school classrooms, libraries or central locations within their school districts to participate. Other than that, everything seemed to proceed as usual. Officials called out words and, upon request from contestants, gave definitions, sentences and word origins.
“We didn’t really face that many challenges at all,” Kitten said. “During our current situation we were very pleased that we had 35 participants. Ordinarily we’d have between 48 and 50. It was an interesting and quite engaging experience for, I believe, the schools and the students, but also AIM Media Texas.”
Angel Guerra, 14, came in second place.
“It feels good,” said Angel, 14, an eighth grader at Central Middle School in Harlingen.
“This is something I’ve been doing for around six years,” he said. “I just wanted to keep improving on what I had done last year.”
The remote aspect was a new experience for him, as for so many.
“It was pretty challenging because it was something I had never done before and I didn’t know how to prepare for it,” he said.
But, he got it done, as did the other spellers.
Ethan’s father, Dr. William Taw, couldn’t say enough about his son’s success.
“We are all excited,” Taw said. “He worked very hard so he deserved it.”
