Marblehead student wins third straight Item spelling bee

LYNN – For the third year in a row, seventh-grader Amber Born from Marblehead claimed the title as best speller in The Daily Item’s annual regional spelling bee.Born, a home-schooled student, correctly spelled ‘excise’ to take home the crown Friday at the bee, held in front of more than 50 spectators at Breed Middle School.Click for a photo gallery of the spelling bee.As Born accepted her award and flowers from teachers, she said she was already looking forward to May, when she will represent the North Shore in Washington, D.C., at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.”I’m really excited, I want to study really hard,” she said.As the winner of The Daily Item’s spelling bee, Born won a round-trip flight and accommodations to the famous spelling bee contest. Last year, Born said she almost placed in the top 50 out of more than 250 students.This year’s Daily Item spelling bee was one of the quickest in recent times, lasting only 30 minutes, said spelling bee judge Sheila O’Neil, a Lynn teacher at the Harrington School.Fifth-grader Elena Nguyen of Paul Revere Innovation School in Revere placed second. The first-time Daily Item spelling bee contestant locked Born in a one-on-one match that went on for 10 words, finally ending when Nguyen misspelled “alligator.””I forgot there were two ‘l’s,'” she said afterward.But both girls correctly spelled words such as “biopsy,” “belay” and “shogun” to make it to the top five.Kris Hartman, Nguyen’s second-and-third-grade teacher at Paul Revere, said Nguyen’s meticulous studying paid off.”She seemed so confident up there,” Hartman said. “I knew she was nervous.”The other top five finishers were: third-place winner Tyler McCoy, a fourth-grader from Clarke Elementary School in Swampscott; fourth-place winner Katelyn Italiano, a seventh-grader from Belmonte Middle School in Saugus; and fifth-place winner Castele Juslin, an eighth-grader from Thurgood Marshall Middle School in Lynn.They won Webster’s New World College Dictionaries and various gift cards.All five girls said they were nervous before the spelling bee started.”I was nervous, but just a little bit, McCoy said. “I practiced a lot.”The students said they were proud of themselves but could quickly point to the words they misspelled.”I got out on ‘petunia,'” Juslin said. “I thought it would be easy but it turned out not to be.”That’s why Born said she asked the moderator for a definition of the word every time – in a spelling bee, a speller cannot take back any letters once he or she says them, she said.”I have a tendency to talk really fast and I don’t want to mess up anything,” she said.Born said she hopes her strategies will serve her well in May.”My goal is to just not miss words I know,” she said.Amber Parcher can be reached at [email protected].