All Bahamians should be exceedingly proud of the performance of Charles Hamilton Jr. in the 2015 Scripps National Spelling Bee. Although he was not among the 49 spellers who advanced to the semi-finals, he spelt both of his onstage words correctly, UMLAUT in Round 2 and WENSLEYDALE in Round 3, but in the vocabulary test he gave the wrong answer for the meaning of the word DESUETUDE and obviously, when his performance in the First Round written test was evaluated, it was not strong enough for him to be included in the 49 semi-finalists.

Given the fact that there were 285 participants at the start of the competition, clearly Charles did exceedingly well and deserves a national round of applause.

An indication of just how difficult it is to win the Scripps Bee, this year’s co-champions, Vanya Shivashankar and Gokul Venkatachalam, are both eighth-graders who previously competed in the Scripps Bee. Vanya was competing for the fifth and final time, and Gokul, 14, of Chesterfield, Missouri, finished third last year.

Clearly, this suggests that a different approach should be used in preparing Bahamian students not only for participation in the Bahamas National Spelling Bee, but also in getting our champion ready to compete in the Scripps Bee.

As the person responsible for introducing the Scripps National Spelling Bee to The Bahamas when I was editor of the Nassau Guardian in 1998, I suggested during the early years of the Bee that schools in The Bahamas each organize Spelling Clubs that hold competitions year-round, it the same manner that we have various sporting events.

Moreover, I think consideration should be given to selecting a National Coach, following the example of Jamaica, whose legendary National Spelling Coach Dr. Glen Archer died last year. Dr. Archer was successful in coaching Jody Anne Maxwell to the Scripps National Championship in 1998, and I think that this year was the first time in many years that Jamaica was not represented in the finals.

Nonetheless, as I previously stated, our champion Charles Hamilton Jr. performed exceedingly well.

Oswald T. Brown
Washington, DC