EDINBURG — “I mean, I don’t have, like, a heart monitor, but I feel like it was 140 (beats per minute),” 13-year-old Roberto “Robbie” Ortiz said of the adrenaline rush he felt shortly after winning the 35th annual Rio Grande Valley Regional Spelling Bee here Saturday afternoon.
The eighth grader from Brownsville’s Incarnate Word Academy fended off 41 other spellers from across the Valley through eight rounds of words until he and two other boys were left.
Those boys, Diego Reyna Oviedo, 13, of IDEA College Preparatory-McAllen, and Luke Holt, 11, of Port Isabel Junior High, were up first for Round 9.
Though it had taken until nearly noon to get through those first 175 words, sitting within the auditorium of the Edinburg Conference Center at Renaissance while the kids rattled off their words felt like watching a lightning round.
The first round saw four spellers eliminated from the competition, while double that number were knocked out in Round 2.
And so it went, with each round of the spelling bee — sponsored by the newspapers of AIM Media Texas, as well as DHR Health — quickly culling a handful of hopefuls at a time.
Diego’s luck ran dry at the start of Round 9 with the word “persuasible.” He spelled the suffix with an “a” instead of an “i.”
Then young Luke stepped up to the mic.
“Ingratiate,” the official pronouncer, Dr. John Foreman, professor of linguistics at UTRGV, said.
“Can you please repeat that?” Luke asked, which Foreman obliged.
“Again, I’m probably gonna get this wrong, but it’s ingratiate?” Luke asked, causing a spurt of laughter from the audience.
Both Luke and another boy, Carlos Alan De Leon Jr., of PSJA’s Carman Elementary School, had misspelled their words in Round 7 of the competition when just four spellers were left.
During that round, Luke had trouble understanding the pronunciation of the word “chemise.”
“Schmeeze?” he said while asking Foreman to repeat the word.
“Schmeeze. I’m probably gonna get this wrong, but, S-C-H-M-E-E-Z-E. Schmeeze,” Luke said, as people in the audience chuckled over the accuracy of his prediction.
With both Luke and Carlos misspelling their Round 7 words, that left only two spellers for the next round. But the competition requires a first, second and third place finisher.
That meant the two boys had another shot at winning as they remained on stage for Round 8 with a clean slate.
Luke got his word, “plutonomy” correct, while Carlos misspelled “palpitant.”
Robbie and Diego got their words correct, too, meaning they and Luke moved on to Round 9 — what would become the final round for the championship.
And it was then that Luke again predicted he knew his limits with the word “ingratiate.”
“E-N-G-R-E-I C — No wait, I already messed up. A-T-E. I’m just gonna say it wrong,” Luke said in a tumble of sounds as he walked back to his seat before the bell dinged to alert him of the misspelling.
Then Robbie walked up to the microphone the picture of calm. His racing heartbeat was something only he knew about at the time.
His next word was “bastion,” which he spelled with ease.
The judges gave Robbie one final word to confirm his win.
“Crustaceans.”
Again, Robbie sailed through the spelling.
“Congratulations, that is correct,” the judge said.
What came next was a brief applause to celebrate Robbie’s win, followed by a spell-off to determine who would take second place.
That honor ultimately went to Diego.
“Just amazing,” Diego said when asked how he felt about coming in second.
Luke, who had humorously telegraphed his own foibles, explained matter-of-factly, “When you can’t spell it, you can’t spell it, and that’s it!”
Meanwhile, aside from winning a trip to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington D.C. this May, Robbie had another reason to celebrate his win — one-upping his older sister, who competed several years ago.
“My sister got second and I need(ed) to beat her,” Robbie said gleefully.
To see more, view Dina Arévalo’s full photo gallery here:
Photo Gallery: The 35th annual Rio Grande Valley Regional Spelling Bee
