‘Managerial’ Makes Assumption BVM 7th Grader the Spelling Bee Champ

Daniel Kim said he didn’t know how to spell ‘managerial’ when it was announced as his championship word during Saturday’s 2024 Schuylkill County Regional Spelling Bee.

Is it spelled with a ‘g’ or a ‘j’? What about the ending of the word? He wasn’t sure.

Luckily for him, he got it right and after 21 rounds, the 7th grader at Assumption BVM in Pottsville was named the Spelling Bee champion.

“I really didn’t think I was going to win,” Kim said.

Kim, 12, of Frackville, moves on to represent Schuylkill County at the 2024 Scripps National Spelling Bee outside Washington, D.C., at the end of May.

Kim Outlasts Randolph to Win 2024 Schuylkill County Regional Spelling Bee

Kim battled it out with Journey Randolph, a 5th grader at North Schuylkill Elementary, for 10 rounds of nail-biting action on the stage at DHH Lengel Middle School Auditorium on Saturday.

The two spellers went back and forth after all the other 37 spellers had been eliminated by the 10th round.

Each had their opportunity to win the Bee, too, but were tripped up by their championship words until Kim got ‘managerial’ right.

For instance, in that 10th round, Randolph misspelled ‘parity’ but Kim transposed the ‘e’ and ‘u’ in ‘Zeus’ for his first chance at the title, so the Bee continued on.

“I really thought I was going to get it on Zeus,” he said.

In the 12th round, Kim spelled ‘adjunct’ incorrectly and after Randolph spelled ‘sierra’ correctly to earn a championship word in the 13th round, she got tripped up on ‘ontological’.

Then, in the 14th round, Kim spelled ‘trajectories’ incorrectly. Randolph followed that by spelling ‘mascara’ correctly but got mixed up by ‘asterisk’ for a chance to claim the title.

The two went toe-to-toe for a few more rounds until 18th. That’s when Kim spelled ‘actuarial’ correctly but missed a chance to win the Bee with ‘insurgency’ in the 19th round.

In the 20th round, Kim spelled ‘traumatic’ correctly. Randolph followed by misspelling ‘degeneracy’ and that gave Kim the chance to win with ‘managerial’.

Kim was presented a metallic trophy that was actually designed and manufactured by Schuylkill Technology Center students. Schuylkill Technology Center coordinated Saturday’s Bee.

The event had a new sponsor for 2024, Northeast PA Manufacturers and Employers Council Inc. Darlene Robbins, president of that organization, presented Kim with the championship trophy.

Kim’s First Spelling Bee

This was Kim’s first Spelling Bee, he said. And he prepped for it by studying just 2-3 hours per week in the lead up to the event on Saturday.

He had help from his sister, Diane, a former Spelling Bee runner-up, and his school coach, Jacqui Urban.

Urban gave him a spelling bee prep book filled with words. His sister would quiz him on the words at home.

Here are the words Kim was given during this year’s Spelling Bee (misspelled words marked with an asterisk*):

• quirky
• medallion
• tinseltown
• cicada
• crimson
• wiles
• manga
• marlin
• dormitory
• flange
• Zeus*
• adjunct*
• trajectories*
• orbicular
• equidistant
• actuarial
• insurgency*
• traumatic
• managerial

Spellers Eliminated by Round

Here is a breakdown of how many spellers were eliminated from the Bee by round in the 2024 Schuylkill County Regional Spelling Bee:

• Round 1: 5
• Round 2: 13
• Round 3: 11
• Round 4: 5
• Round 5: 1
• Round 7: 1
• Round 9: 1
• Round 10: 1
• Round 21: 1

2024 Schuylkill County Regional Spelling Bee Word List

Every word in the 2024 Schuylkill County Regional Spelling Bee (misspelled words marked with an asterisk (*):

• apology
• semester*
• astonish
• stupefy*
• bias*
• daft
• kiwi
• macaw
• roustabout
• gleaned*
• divine
• marooned
• valiant*
• giggle
• punctuation*
• scalp
• vicinity
• colic
• affluent
• memoir
• disentangle
• gertrude
• potentate
• formidable*
• galley
• baptismal*
• cidery*
• collie
• conundrum
• beguile*
• grapple
• editorial
• venomous
• facile*
• yammer
• opulent*
• foothills
• sweltering
• hijab
• stimuli
• cadet
• compostable
• maintenance*
• element
• technician
• coercive*
• encore*
• surly*
• lawyer
• compatriots*
• modify
• rehearsal
• noxious*
• freckle
• nocturnal
• apiary
• serrated*
• quirky
• medallion
• tinseltown
• cicada
• crimson
• wiles
• manga
• marlin
• dormitory
• flange
• zeus*
• adjunct*
• trajectories*
• orbicular
• equidistant
• actuarial
• insurgency*
• traumatic
• managerial
• sterling
• extinguish
• cartilage
• plantain*
• gizzard*
• proposal
• lexicon
• emissary*
• spreadsheet
• accomplice*
• amusement
• auditorium
• statistician*
• shaggy
• pantheon*
• graham
• emancipatory*
• merely
• deprivation*
• frontier
• asylum
• millivolt
• dolmen*
• toastmaster
• tantrum
• Vatican*
• kennel
• whey*
• traverse
• beret
• osmosis*
• scrooge
• corral
• syringe
• eschew*
• awry
• corgi
• congeniality*
• ferret
• antipathy
• billiards
• caustic
• foreclosure
• hoodlum
• equine
• splice
• cognitive
• parity*
• sierra
• ontological*
• mascara
• asterisk*
• duppy
• beefeater
• vigilante*
• degeneracy*
• dribbles
• riviera
• cantankerous*
• foosball
• feign*
• boarders
• antacid
• turducken*
• musings
• avarice*

^{Photos: Coal Region Canary}

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