City Crowns Spelling Bee Champion

Hoboken has a new spelling champion, fourth grader Ananya Jain of Stevens Cooperative elementary school. Jain outlasted 17 other students from six Hoboken schools to win the third annual citywide spelling bee, sponsored by the Hoboken Rotary Club.

Vienne Voysey of the Mustard Seed school finished second, and Gabby Howenstein, also of Stevens, finished in third place. The winners earned $100, $50 and $25 respectively in gift certificates to Barnes & Noble courtesy of the Brownstone Agency. Jain also won a deluxe unabridged dictionary.

Each year the Rotary gives dictionaries to every third-grader in Hoboken. Rotarian Noelle Tate got the idea to entice those students to use their new dictionaries by challenging them in a spelling bee the following year.

“We were thinking about our involvement in promoting literacy,” Tate said. “We thought this was a great way to do that, and also to bring the community together.”

Each of the schools involved – Stevens and Mustard Seed, plus Calabro, Connors, Hoboken Catholic and Hoboken Charter – held their own spelling bees, with the top three students in each school advancing to the city finals.

Over 150 parents, students, teachers and Rotarians packed the host Hoboken Catholic gym on Thursday night. The Rotary, which is celebrating its 90^th anniversary this year, raised money for future educational projects through $2 ticket sales, extra cash donations and tickets sold for a 50/50 raffle to be held during its upcoming anniversary party.

Rotarians Greg Dell'Aquila, Marie Stinson and Tate administered the spelling bee. Tate said she chose the words used from a list suggested by the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and also fourth grade spelling books.

The students were given 40 seconds to spell their assigned words. They were allowed to ask for the definition and origin of each word, and for it to be used in a sentence. The students could restart spelling a word, but they could not change any letters already spoken.

The students warmed up on simple words such as over and loose, then tackled longer ones like limit and dental, and finally found a challenge with complex words such as sincerely and traditional.

As students were eliminated for missing words, they walked off the stage where they each received a certificate and posed for photos.

After Voysey missed in the 14^th round, Jain correctly spelled occasions to take the title.

Later, Jain nodded shyly when asked if she had studied hard, and also again when asked if she was nervous onstage, though she did smile throughout.