Row 1: Grace Morris, Cynthia Renteria Ruvalcaba, Team Manager Ray Fan, Jena Downs, Sydney Morris, Julia Marohn
Row 2: Samuel Carroll, Jessica Baca, Garrett Garver, Hope Carter, Edgar Garcia Cuatlatl, Autumn Wilson, Sharon Oviedo, Matt Pintal, and Devin Rogers.
Photo by Amy Schmeltz

Word after word, correct answer after correct answer, wiith some mistakes mixed in between all of this madness, the PHS Spell Bowl team placed third in state.

Purdue University held the state competition for Spell Bowl, and the PHS team was so happy to have qualified. The team placed third at state for Class 1 on Saturday, November 12th. The team had a similar victory in 2012, when they went to state and earned third place.

Junior Sydney Morris of the Spell Bowl team was the only member of the team to get a perfect score for the sixth straight contest of the season. The words she spelled correctly are tusche, sgraffito, glissade, cuneiform, achievable, parti pris, etiquette, leitmotif, and Wernicke’s area. For the state contest Senior Garrett Garver, Sophomore Jessica Baca, Sophomore Edgar Garcia Cuatlatl, Junior Sydney Morris, and Junior Autumn Wilson had perfect scores. Junior Grace Morris and Sophomore Julia Marohn earned near perfect scores.

Edgar said, “I don’t know how to describe the feeling of getting a perfect. I just feel proud. It shows that hard work really does pay off, and ending the season like that was great.”

Autumn said, “It is a wonderful feeling when you get a perfect score because all of your studying paid off. It is terrifying to sit there and wonder which nine words you are going to get out of over 3,000 others, so it is very relieving to get a good score.”

Coach Schmeltz has been coaching the team for seven years. Tough practices, hard studying, and hard work paid off for the team. The team practiced every Monday and Wednesday after school from August through November until the state competition for one hour and they used vocabulary.com. For the competition, the students had to learn 3,500 words. Until the competition, the words are not revealed. They only know that the words will be among the 3,500 words they had to learn.

Coach Schmeltz said, “I feel confident that my team gave it their best shot. They worked hard all season and they were extremely excited about the results.  I think they have already set the bar higher for themselves for next year.”

Everyone on the team has a different favorite thing about Spell Bowl. Some of them are how competitive they can be, how peculiar the words are, or just being up on stage.

Samuel Carroll said, “Spell Bowl is cool because you get to learn new words like Reykjavik or frijole. Frijole is just a single bean. Only one.”

If you are interested in joining the Spell Bowl team for next year, make sure to contact Coach Schmeltz at aschmeltz@plymouth.k12.in.us!