GIRARD, Kan. — Longer than a title fight of 12 rounds, it all came down to the 17th round for Pittsburg Community Middle School student Ryan Burton. With a correct spelling in the 16th round and the other two finalists misspelling their word, Burton claimed the title as Crawford County Spelling Bee champion with the word “mendacious.”  

Burton kept it short following his victory, pushing through more than a dozen rounds, noting that he felt “lucky” after studying for countless hours in preparation for the spelling bee, which took place Friday morning in the Shireman Performing Arts Center at Girard High School.  

More than 30 middle school and elementary school students, representing Girard, Frontenac, Northeast, Southeast, and Pittsburg schools, gathered in the auditorium for Friday’s competition. 

“We all have our own individual school spelling bees,” said R.V. Haderlein Elementary Title I Coordinator Becky Oplotnik. “They are any elementary school or middle school in our county and the first- and second-place winners from each school, there’s 13 schools that we have, get to come join us for the (Crawford) County Spelling Bee ... There is no minimum (age). In Girard, we start with second grade, and eighth grade is the highest grade level that they can do.”  

Oplotnik served as the pronouncer of the event, receiving assistance from Girard Middle School English Instructor Wendi O’Rand and R.V. Haderlein Elementary Title I Coordinator Melissa Sisney.  

The students opened the competition with two practice rounds to calm the nerves before jumping into elimination rounds. Around 15 minutes into the spelling bee, the competition began. The students were given words such as brick, husk, blooper, squabble, influential, refinery, mythical, and agility in the first two rounds. Of the 35 students, 10 remained heading into the third round.  

Through the next three rounds, the students competed in a vocabulary round before jumping back into spelling, and were given the words welterweight, pyramid, felonious, grandeur, vendetta, affiliate, pinnacle, and acoustic. That reduced the competition to just six students. 

Three students were eliminated in the seventh round, leaving Ryan Burton (Pittsburg Community Middle School), Eastin Lofts (Northeast Middle School), and Connor Tompkins (Southeast Middle School). 

For 10 subsequent rounds, the three battled. Finally, Burton took home the title, spelling “mendacious,” to become this year’s Crawford County Spelling Bee champion.  

Words given in those final 10 rounds included hydrophobia, irrevocable, bodega, alchemy, corrosive, archetype, dissolution, evanescent, incinerate, and novemdecillion.  

“They are amazing,” said Oplotnik. “They have to put so much time into studying. Think about the kids that ask for the origin. That makes a difference on how these words are spelled and the definition and the synonyms that they use. For them to actually ask that and for them to know how that changes spelling is amazing.  

“I know I spend ours just prepping to say these words and I’m not even spelling them. So they do an amazing job and to have the ambition to actually do this. For so many kids who they don’t care, or they don’t want to put the time and effort into it, and you can tell all these kids do (care) tremendously.”  

Burton will move on to the Sunflower State Spelling Bee, which will be held at Kansas Wesleyan University in Salina on Saturday, March 21, with Lofts as the alternate.   

The winner of the Sunflower State Spelling Bee is eligible for the Scripps National Spelling Bee from May 26 through May 28 in Washington, D.C., which will be broadcast on national television. 

This reporting is made possible, in part, by the Support Local Journalism Project Fund. Learn more at: southeastkansas.org/Localnews.