Merced County spelling bee winners announced. Now they move on to state championships
.jpg "Vivian Le, an eighth grader from Creekside Junior High in Los Banos and Sixth-grader Rishabh Saha of Luther Burbank Elementary School and each won first place in their respective competitions in the Merced County Spelling Bees.")
The sharp wits and stellar vocabulary skilled of Merced County’s youth were on display this week, as local spelling bees were held Tuesday and Wednesday.
Among the top highlights of the event, the first in-person spelling bee in two years:
Sixth-grader Rishabh Saha of Luther Burbank Elementary School and Vivian Le, an eighth grader from Creekside Junior High in Los Banos, each won first place in their respective competitions.
In the elementary school spelling bee, the runner-up was Steve Wade, a sixth grader at Bellevue Elementary School in Atwater, with Mountain Chein, a sixth grader at St. Paul Lutheran Church and School in Merced, taking third place.
The winning word in the elementary school competition was “carrefour,” according to a press release from the Merced County Office of Education, and the tie-breaking word to determine second and third places was “nebulous.”
In the junior high competition, Hoover Middle School seventh-grader Sophia Liu took second place and Alexander Hampton, an eighth grader at Hoover Middle, took third place.
The winning word in the junior high spelling bee was “rheumatism.”
The first- and second-place winners in the elementary school competition will advance to the state championships next year. No date is set for the junior high competition as of yet.