Sonoma County’s star spellers head to state meet

Jonah Hatt, an eighth-grader from Guerneville School, is one of two Sonoma County competitors who will compete in California state spelling contests this spring.

Jonah will participate May 2 in the Junior High Spelling Championship held in San Rafael. Fiona Sweet, a sixth-grader from Santa Rosa’s Strawberry Elementary School, will travel to Stockton on April 18 for the Elementary Championship.

Both took first-place awards in the recent countywide spelling competitions held by the Sonoma County Office of Education.

Jonah outspelled 36 competitors to take first place in the Junior High division, breaking a tie in the 14th round by correctly spelling “enforceable,” then winning the event by nailing the word “audacity.”

Second place went to Cayden Lehr, an eighth-grader at Windsor Christian Academy. Third place went to seventh-grader Wayne Heron from Salmon Creek Charter School in Occidental. Classmate Paola Aldana, also a seventh-grader at Salmon Creek, earned the fourth-place award.

Jonah Hatt was born in central Michigan and has lived in Guerneville since 2008, first realizing he was a good speller in sixth grade, when he won the elementary level contest by outspelling 39 other contestants.

“Mom is (a good speller), but Dad has been asking me how to spell words since I was in the fourth grade,” he said.

Jonah is preparing for the state competition by having his 16-year-old brother read words for him to spell.

Sonoma County’s Elementary School clash pitted 17 fourth- to sixth-graders who had won regional and school spelling bees. Fiona Sweet broke the 14th round tie by spelling “sitzmark” correctly, then successfully spelled “parochial” to win the contest in the following round.

Varnika Kailish, also a sixth-grade who attends Santa Rosa Accelerated Charter School, took second place. Fifth-grader Andy Gao from Sonoma Country Day School took third place, and Saki Burns, a sixth-grader from Windsor Middle School, finished fourth.

Coordinated by the San Joaquin County office of Education, the bee is open to wordsmiths in all 58 of California’s counties.

The concept of spelling bees is believed to have originated in the United States, with Frank Neuhauser winning the first official spelling bee in 1925 at age 11.

- Stephen D. Gross