Marion sixth-grade speller heads to national bee

Holstein.

That was the winning word for Lindsey Jessen, a sixth-grader from Marion, at the 42nd Annual Dispatch-Argus Regional Spelling Bee.

Lindsey outlasted 39 other participants in the event Saturday at Centennial Hall on the campus of Augustana College in Rock Island.

She earned an expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C., to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which runs May 28-June 2.

“My favorite subject is math,” Lindsey said after the tournament, adding that she is home-schooled by her mother, Carla, who has a degree in elementary education from the University of Iowa.

She also will compete March 23 in Iowa’s MathCounts state competition in Ankeny, she said.

Describing how she studied for Saturday’s competition, Lindsey said she and her mom “read through the list of words, and then she would call them out to me. Any ones I missed I would practice them until I got it right.”

Lindsey added that what helps her is the fact that “I love to read.”

Carla Jessen said a bit of help was the Word Club app on the Scripps National Spelling Bee website.

“We love that one,” Jessen said. “Because I don’t know how to pronounce some of these words. We didn’t start studying until well into the school year, and we downloaded the app … I was looking up the words and trying to write down the correct pronunciations so I could remember how to say it, and the app pronounced it for us. The more we used the app, the better we liked it because it bookmarks the ones you missed and the ones you need to practice.”

Jessen said she had home-schooled Lindsey since she was 3 years old and that Lindsey “says she wants to be an engineer.”

Second place went to Parthasaradhi Katreddy, who is in sixth grade at Hopewell Elementary School in Bettendorf.

Parthasaradhi was one of several contestants who asked questions about the words, and when spelling acted as if he was writing it down on the palm of his hand. He said it’s a tool that works.

But he also used other tools offered in the rules, as did other contestants, such as asking for a word’s definition and to hear its use in a sentence.

To study for the contest, Parthasaradhi said, “I used the Word Club app to type out the words and practice them every day.” He added that, “My favorite subject also is math,” and when asked what he might like to study in college, “probably computer science.”

Third place went to Matthew Winkler, who is in sixth grade at Mount Vernon Middle School in Mount Vernon.

Danine Glascock, the coordinator for the event, said of Saturday’s contestants, “Every single one of them was bright.”

The contestants were given a list of words to study, she said. And then there was a list of words they did not get to study in case the competition is tough between the contestants.

“We did not get into the words that they hadn’t studied,” Glascock said. “They were all from the study guide that they got.”

Glascock said the spelling list was closely guarded. And the rules are strict, she added.

“We’re not allowed to livestream the event to protect the integrity of the word list. Some places haven’t had their bees, so it’s closely guarded.”

Lindsey Jessen took home a large trophy, and her family will receive travel expenses to take her to compete in Washington.

Glascock said the competition in Washington would begin with the preliminaries May 30 with the finals ending June 1. The competition is not by age, and Lindsey “will be competing against other regional champions, and there will be more than 200 spellers there.”