Top speller
Martinelli wins spelling bee
Gallup Catholic eighth-grader Kasey Martinelli celebrates after winning the 38th Annual Gallup-McKinley County District Spelling Bee on Wednesday. Martinelli spelled the word "daily" to win the contest. — © 2009 Gallup Independent / Brian Leddy

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — It’s as American as apple pie — boys and girls standing petrified in front of a microphone as they nervously try to spell words no one has ever heard before.

On Wednesday, that was the case for 18 elementary school students from around the county as they tackled the words in this year’s district spelling bee, sponsored by the Elementary Principals’ Association.

Actually, the words may have been easier this year, or as least the winner, Casey Martinelli, thinks so.

Martinelli, 12, who goes to Gallup Catholic, was participating in her fourth competition.

“In my first year, I was the third one out,” she said. She did better the next year, coming in 11th and even better last year when she came in sixth.

This year she won on the word “daily.”

“I was a little disappointed because I was hoping for a long word,” she said, adding that she also a little relieved because “I knew that word.”

This is not to say that she didn’t have a scare or two during the competition.

Take the word “tithe,” for example. A word you hear a lot, especially if you are a regular churchgoer and you pay attention to the pastor asking parishioners to tithe a certain percentage of their salary to support the church.

But when it came up Wednesday, it caused Martinelli to pause for a second.

“I wrote ‘tith’ on my hand and I knew it didn’t look right so I added an ‘e’ and I got it,” she said.

Since a number of the words are repeated in the spelling bee guidebook each year, it helps to have a little bit of experience going into the competition and Martinelli said this helped.

What also helped, she said, was the encouragement of her mother, Patricia, who totally lost it when she was declared the winner.

“She was crying and I was crying. It was really an awesome moment,” Martinelli said.

Norma Baldonado, who helped organize this year’s events, said that originally 20 students were supposed to show up for the competition but, for some reason, Ramah Elementary didn’t make it.

Besides Gallup Catholic, other schools that participated this year were Indian Hills, Juan De Onate, Lincoln, Red Rock, Stagecoach, Thoreau, Tobe Turpen and Tohatchi.

“The competition was very exciting,” Baldonado said, adding that because of the low number of competitors, it lasted less than 45 minutes but it went several rounds.

Martinelli and the student who came in second, Kiara Charley, of Thoreau Elementary, will now be going to Albuquerque in March for he regional competition.

Although the win in Gallup was relatively easy, Martinelli said she expects the regionals will be a lot harder so she plans to start spending an hour a day beginning Monday going over the words in the guidebook.