The judges nodded their approval, making the 13-year-old eighth-grader from Rock Hill the 2000 Lawrence County Spelling Bee champion Friday.

Saturday, January 15, 2000

The judges nodded their approval, making the 13-year-old eighth-grader from Rock Hill the 2000 Lawrence County Spelling Bee champion Friday.

"I was nervous," Miss Chaffins said, smiling and clutching her trophy.

"I’ve been here once before, but I didn’t make it," she said.

Miss Chaffins pitted her spelling wits against nine others from Dawson-Bryant, Fairland, Rock Hill, South Point and Symmes Valley school districts.

Studying word lists with her grandmother, Jeanne Clutters, gave her an edge, though, she said.

"I would study and go over there and she’d give them to me," Miss Chaffins said. "I thought I’d choke up and get too nervous but I remembered ‘jaundice’ because I missed it when grandma gave it to me the last time."

Fairland student Matt Pritt studied, too – enough to secure his place as runner-up in the spelling bee.

"I wasn’t nervous until I got up there," Pritt said.

Friday’s spell-off wasn’t the first for the seventh-grader, who likes academic competition almost as well as he does school sports.

"I won the elementary in the fourth grade, but this was my goal," he said. "I’ve been trying to get here every year."

Pritt is the son of Mary and Tim Pritt. Miss Chaffins is the daughter of Donna and Keith Chaffins.

As winner and runner-up, both will compete in the regional spelling bee March 25 at the Huntington, W.Va., Civic Arena.

If one can’t make it, then third-place county spelling bee winner, Anna Keffer of South Point, will serve as alternate.

"We will be well represented because these are the best we’ve got," county superintendent Harold Shafer said.

The 10 students competing at the Lawrence County Educational Service Center event, spelled words like satellite, insignificant, concurrence, ballistic and compatible – proving their academic prowess, Shafer said.

These competitions are reminders that academic concerns are chief among schools, and Lawrence County’s children are well prepared for the future, he said.

Each student participating received a school board certificate, backpack and other gifts.

Lawrence County Common Pleas Court presiding Judge Richard Walton also handed out certificates of appreciation to the spellers, all of whom placed in the top at individual school spelling bees.

"Every one of you is a winner," Walton said. "No matter what you do, you are all winners."