About 130 people gathered at Pleasant Hill Adventist Academy on April 26 to watch the first Northern California Conference spelling bee. The event united spelling champions from 13 Adventist elementary schools in the spirit of friendly competition. While this is the first conference-wide contest, the Greater Bay Area spelling bee started 10 years ago, which only included seven schools — Napa Christian Campus of Education, Pleasant Hill Adventist Academy, Hilltop Christian School, Vineyard Christian School, Lodi Adventist Elementary and Golden Gate Academy.
Berit von Pohle, NCC education superintendent, served as a judge of last year’s Bay area bee and enjoyed it so much that she decided to include all of the NCC schools. “Expanding the spelling bee to include the entire conference gave an opportunity for more students to be involved,” said von Pohle. “It was particularly exciting that nearly half of the finalists were from one- and two-teacher schools.”
The 16 participants in the final were decided by six regional spelling bees. Each NCC school sent up to three students to the regionals, and each regional bee sent up to three students to the finals. The finalists were quizzed on an assortment of more than 700 words from a book that they were previously given to study, and their responses carefully monitored by a panel of three judges. NCC President Jim Pedersen, von Pohle, and former NCC Associate Superintendent Isabel Rincón served as the spelling bee judges. Barry van Iderstein, von Pohle’s assistant, gave the words to the students. Larissa Rutherford, a 13-year-old from Sutter Hill elementary, said that the hardest words were “those with German origins.”
Each participant was well-prepared for the spelling bee, and many refused to surrender to even the trickiest words given by van Iderstein. Shelby Taylor, a student from the Orangevale school who has already been in four spelling bees, gave the advice to “think of the word before you say it. Try to calm your nerves.” The knowledge and resolve of the students resulted in the contest lasting two and a half hours. "The students were so prepared that we used up all of the 700-plus words in the book and had to use an older spelling bee word list to finish the spelling bee,” said van Iderstein. “Clearly we need to make it harder next year!"
Eventually the field was whittled down to two — Chris Sumbillo, a student at Foothills Elementary School, and Jonathan Doram, an elementary student at Sacramento Adventist Academy. Both contestants gave a great effort, but when Sumbillo was able to correctly spell “invocation,” he was declared the champion. Kevin Sacro, also from Foothills Adventist Elementary, took third place. Sumbillo, Doram and Sacro won trophies and cash prizes of $300, $200, and $100 respectively from an anonymous donor. When asked about his win, Sumbillo said that it was a “little surprising, but I’m thankful and happy. I will most likely save the money.”
“I feel tired but good," Doram added. "I thought I was going to get out in the fifth or sixth. I will compete again, and I’m going to save the prize money for college and books.”
There are plans to make this conference-wide spelling bee, which was mainly organized by van Iderstein and Monica Greene, principal of Hilltop Christian School, a yearly occurrence. “This year's spelling bee was an overwhelming success,” said Greene. “We had full conference participation, and all of our students were really prepared. We are looking forward to next year's competition with great anticipation.”
