Legacy sixth grader takes third in county spelling bee

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Anab Abdulle of Legacy Traditional School in Maricopa came in third at the 47th annual Pinal County Spelling Bee at Vista Grande High School in Casa Grande Friday.

Austin Ryba of Coolidge took first, and Aniket Panda of Cactus Middle School came in second.

Abdulle, a sixth grader at Legacy Traditional who likes to read and play tennis, won her school’s district spelling bee on Jan. 21 by spelling ‘parmesan’ correctly. Runner-up was sixth grader Lane Johnson, and fourth grader Fabiana Petroza placed third. All three went to Casa Grande for the county spelling bee.

All school districts in Pinal County and several charter schools were represented at the county event. Each student was given one word per round. Spellers could ask for a definition, to have the word used in a sentence, the word’s language of origin and for any alternate pronunciations.

Tyler Curtis, a fifth grader from Maricopa Elementary School, won the Maricopa Unified School District contest by spelling ‘tamale’ correctly in round three. The runner-up was fifth grader Kelleigh Hogan from Saddleback Elementary School. Curtis and Hogan, as well as alternates Janaa Manning from Santa Cruz Elementary and Delano Jackson from Desert Wind Middle School, went to the county competition.
 
The 2010 Arizona Spelling Bee will be held Saturday, March 27, at 1 p.m. at the 8/AZ PBS Studio located in the ASU Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication in downtown Phoenix.  The top 27 spellers in the state compete in the Arizona Spelling Bee to determine who will represent Arizona in the 83rd annual Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., in May.

File photo