Last year, seventh-grader Heather desJardins-Park was beaten by a leviathan -- the word, that is.
DesJardins-Park, now an eighth-grader at Lime Kiln Middle School, misspelled the word after making it to the final four in last year's Howard County Library Spelling Bee. The competition was won by Joey Haavik, a fifth-grader at Pointers Run Elementary School, who correctly spelled the word Zoroastrian (an ancient religion). The two are heading to the bee again this year, and Heather is in it to win.
"Last year, I was like, eh, it's not such a big deal," she said. "But it was."
Heather and her sister, Caroline desJardins-Park, a fifth-grader at Fulton Elementary School, have been studying "a lot more this year," Heather said. The two girls were the only sibling pair to qualify for the library spelling bee last year, and both have qualified again.
"I think they're just naturally good at spelling," said their mother, Marie desJardins, a computer science professor at UMBC. "I was also good at spelling, even when I was little, and I think they inherited it."
The good-natured competition sometimes leaves the world of spelling: When Heather bumped into Joey at the Columbia Gym recently, Marie desJardins said, "they didn't have a war of words, but she was trying to lift more weights than he was."
The third Howard County Library Spelling Bee -- scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday at Howard High School -- will feature 58 participants, up from 50 last year, said Kelli Shimabukuro, the library's community education and partnership coordinator and a main organizer of the event. That is because more county schools held spelling bees this year, she said.
The bee is organized under the rules of the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee and is sponsored by the library and The Sun. To qualify, students in grades four through eight must win their school spelling bees. The winner of Friday's spelling bee will receive $1,000 and an all-expense-paid trip to the national spelling bee in Washington, scheduled for May 30-31.
This year, the "pronouncer," the person who states the words to be spelled, will be Brian Auger, the library's associate director. Richard W. Story, chief executive officer of the Howard County Economic Development Authority, will be master of ceremonies, as he was last year. The head judge will be Diane Mikulis, chairman of the Howard County Board of Education.
