For the 7th consecutive year, since its Boston inauguration, the Nazzaro Center has hosted a regional spelling bee for the local North End schools and will be sending two representatives to the Boston finals at the Copley Library on March 22. As the chosen Boston entity to administer the local Bees that ultimately send the city representatives to the regional Finals, the Boston Centers for Youth and Families delegate the running of the local contests to its 35 centers, the Nazzaro Center being one of them.
The center, for its part, partners with the two neighborhood schools, the Eliot public and St. John parochial, to determine one winner from each school through a series of grade specific bees. As mandated by the Scripps Spelling Bee company, the organization that controls the bee at the national level, only students in grades 4-8 are eligible to compete. Therefore, the Nazzaro held 5 bees, one for each grade, and then one final “spell-off” with the winners from each.
The center would like to announce and recognize the winners; they are…..all the youth that participated! But since Scripps will only allow us to send two representatives to the Copley Library, the outcome of the spell-off dictate that Jacob Stein from the Eliot and Domenic Orlando of St. John School are those two. Should either one of these two boys find themselves as the last one standing on March 22, they would win an all expenses paid trip for two to Washington D.C. to compete in the national Finals! And don’t think that’s just pipe dream. Twice the Boston representative came from the Nazzaro, including the very first year, 2008, that the city began sending someone.
Again, a big shout out to all the participants. And here’s wishing our two representatives the best of luck. If anyone is interested in cheering on our boys and watching the city spell-off, it’s free and open to the public on Saturday March 22 in the Rabb Lecture Hall of the Copley Public Library beginning at 9:30 am.
Photos by Carl Ameno.
