This is the third straight year we'll be covering the Bee (2003, 2004, and scroll up for liveblogging of both years), and we've decided to expand from the event itself to do some pregame work. (After all, with the Race over and y'all not interested in The Contender, what am I going to do? Wait for Bo's inevitable victory?)
So today, we start our S-P-E-L-L-E-R of the Day profiles right here with Tricia Powles of South Philadelphia, one of 69 two-time competitors in this year's finals:
Tricia has been studying and competing since she was 10, but she is still not used to attracting so many eyes. She is home-schooled, so she sees two people during her average school day: her 7-year-old brother Nathaniel and her teacher and mother, Pamela. . .
No matter how collegial her fellow contestants are, Tricia knows it hurts to miss words. Last year, she bowed out on ecchymosis (from the Greek, it means the escape of blood into tissue from ruptured blood vessels).
"It's really annoying, especially if I've studied it before," she said. "I was really nervous [last year]. I was mad because I knew a bunch of other people's words."
Tricia's mother is confident her daughter is prepared this year. Tricia loves reading science fiction, which often incorporates many offbeat words, and she packs in study sessions between her usual lessons. She studies French and Spanish to help with foreign words assimilated into English.
"This year," her mother said, "she knows what's coming."
To win, Tricia must defeat recent history as well as her opponents. Philadelphia-area students have won twice in the bee's 78-year history, but no Philadelphian has won since 1971.
Beyond S-P-E-L-L-E-R of the Day, we'll also be looking at Rules changes, Bee history and random Google searches for former Bee faves, like Jamaica's Trudy McLeary. Welcome to Sweeps Month in the blogosphere . . .
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