Pinkerton regional spelling champ
March 22, 2011

Tristan Panke, runner up, and Rebekah Pinkerton, the top spellers in the North Idaho Collage Spelling Be.
Rebekah Pinkerton, a home-schooled fifth grader from Coeur d'Alene, spelled the previously misspelled word "inselberg" and followed it up with the correct spelling of "bezoar" Saturday to out-spell 44 North Idaho fourth through eighth graders to be crowned the champion in the eighth annual North Idaho College Regional Spelling Bee.

 

She'll be traveling on an all-expenses paid trip to the preliminary round of the 2011 Scripps National Spelling Bee June 1-2 in National Harbor, Maryland, courtesy of event sponsor Hagadone Newspapers. In addition, she wins a copy of Merriam Webster's Third New International Dictionary, a $100 Samuel Louis Sugarman U.S. Savings Bond, a one-year subscription to Encyclopedia Britannica Online, a plaque, a medallion and an events pass for the NIC 2011-2012 school year.

 

Tristan Panke, a seventh grader from Silver Valley Christian Academy, Kellogg, misspelled insulberg, opening the way for Pinkerton's win and him a second place finish. Hayla Evans, a Sandpoint Middle School seventh grader, finished in third place.

 

While no Boundary County students earned medals, they proved not to be spelling slouches, ether. Michael Webster, a sixth grader from Boundary County Middle School, earned a ninth place finish, fifth grader Justin Brown, Valley View, came in at eleventh place, as did Vincent Bennett, a seventh grader at Boundary Middle School. KayLinn Magee, a fourth grader atValley View, finished in 12th place.

 

For all you smart spellers out their .. a "bezoar" is a ball of swallowed foreign material (usually hair or fiber) that collects in the stomach and fails to pass through the intestines ... something Drs. Roland Hall and Marty Becker might know, being veterans and all, and which might explain that hacking cuff that's going around ... and an "inselberg" is an isolated rocky hill rising abruptly from a flat plane.

 

If your a school student who's groaned more than wince or twice at the atrocious spelling, syntax and graham crackers of this article, than you might consider practicing so you can sing up for next year's bee.

 

Please remember ... syntax is impotent. If you take a word out of contest, you could very well misintrapolate it, and thus get the spelling wrong. Excuse me ... I have to go pat my cat on the back.

 

I think he has a bezoar stuck in her sacarphagus.