Babushka's Revenge

It's 100 days to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, DC, the big national championship for spellers from all across the US. It all starts locally, and last night here in Madison, SD, we gave a young lady, Shauna Pauli from Milbank, a chance to move on to the state championship in Yankton, where she'll face only four other regional champions. More here.

Yours truly was the pronouncer for the bee, and my lingering cold might have had something to do with kids' trouble with words like grotto, geode, isobar, and quesadilla. But not aria. Babushka put one of the spellers out, and it was almost sayonara for our champion when she missed it, but she came back to win.

Sponsored by Jon Hunter and The Madison Daily Leader, the regional contest, held last night in the TCB at DSU, had about 10 spellers, mostly from Madison, but a young lady from Milbank came down and wrested the crown away from a local boy after about a dozen rounds of spelling. She'll have a chance to win an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington when she faces the other qualifiers. Go spellers!