In the end, it was zucchini that made all the difference.
"Zucchini" was the final word in last week's spelling bee at C.C. Pinckney Elementary School. Of the 18 students selected for the April 9 event, only two were left standing when the final word of the day was sounded.
Fourth-grader Gabriella Mejia correctly spelled the word to win the event. Sixth-grader Andrew Pena came in at runner-up.
The talent pool on stage represented the end result of a month of spelling competitions at the school, said principal Annie Crandle. The school spent most of March conducting contests at the classroom level. The winners from those events represented their classes in last week's schoolwide bee.
The school district chose the words for the bee, which included "thermometer," "prey," "psychology," "trapeze" and "mature."
When called, each student left a seat on the stage, approached a microphone and waited patiently for his challenge to be revealed. If the student spelled a word incorrectly, a judge raised a red paddle to indicating he had been eliminated.
The students weren't the only ones under pressure. The event hit a small bump about halfway through when the moderator -- an instructional support specialist for the school district -- repeated a word incorrectly to one contestant.
"The spelling bee's a little nervous, just like the students," moderator Maribeth Henderson reminded the audience.
Crandle said Mejia and Pena would represent the school in the district spelling bee April 30.
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