The Lowell High School Spell Bowl team has kicked off the 2017-2018 Academic Team competition season with two victories. At the Northwest Hoosier Conference Tournament, Lowell defeated their closest competitor North Newton by four words. Lowell followed their Conference Tournament championship by winning the Lowell Regional competition, which qualifies the spell bowl team for state finals in the Senior Division for the second consecutive year.
At the Class 1 Regional competition, Max Cherbak received a perfect spelling score and Danae Koslovsky missed only one word. Over 168 high school teams competed in area competitions at 18 sites across the state at the Regional competition on Monday, October 30. The Lowell Spell Bowl team is coached by Mallory Swisher and Spell Bowl practices each Tuesday and Wednesday from 5 pm – 6pm, with the teammates studying at home in between practice.
The Academic Team season is broken into three seasons – fall, winter, and spring – with Spell Bowl competition occurring each fall. To participate, spellers master a list of 3,500 words that include entries like oliganeous, faille, hauberk, and more. Competitions consist of ten rounds with each round consisting of nine words read to competitors by the emcee. A different team member competes each round. After the emcee finishes pronouncing the word, using it in a sentence, then pronouncing the word a second time, they will tell the participant to “Begin” which initiates a 15 second countdown for the participant to write the word in the correct space on the answer sheet.
The Red Devils competed in their second consecutive year at Purdue University in West Lafayette on Saturday November 11 for the state championship competition where Terre Haute South ended up securing the Championship Title.
Congratulations to the Lowell High School Spell Bowl Team on another successful year!