After placing second at the Franklin Community competition, the Mooresville High School’s Spell Bowl team qualified to compete in the State round. The State competition was located at Purdue University in Lafayette. There were 16 other schools attending the competition ready to spell their hardest. Mooresville ended the competition tied in 15th place.

Each speller was given nine words to spell, getting a ribbon for perfect (getting all nine words correct) or near perfect (getting eight words correct).  Sophomore Livi Butler had the highest score on the team with eight out of nine words correct.

“I thought that Livi Butler set the tone by getting the near perfect in the earlier round. We had several students with seven words right. which is close to near perfect, and we had our alternates do pretty well too,” Professor Andrew Marine said.

“I think we did amazing. We didn’t get last which is really cool because we only had nine people and there were ten rounds,” Butler said.

Other members received anywhere from seven words correct to five words correct.

“I was thinking ‘I hope I don’t spell this wrong,'” Senior Brooke Wilson said.

The pressure is on when spellers wait to see what word they will be attempting to spell. Words range in difficulty, leaving spellers to hope they get a simple word.
The Link for the word list is here:

https://iasp.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/spellseniorwordlist.pdf