Carmen Hairston stepped up to the microphone at the Trotter Convention Center Wednesday, took a deep breath and waited to hear the word that could make her the youngest ever winner of the Scripps Howard Columbus-Lowndes District Spelling Bee.
The West Lowndes fourth-grader, competing against 25 other county students, many of them eighth-graders, had successfully advanced through six rounds to get to the moment and now needed one more correct spelling to defeat her co-finalist, an eighth-grader.
She braced herself for what she assumed to be the most difficult word yet.
Her mind flashed back to the 1,000 words she had been studying for weeks, words she copied every day and poured through the dictionary to learn their meanings and pronunciations.
Then came her word: Scooter.
Scooter? That was the word?
For a moment, she was suspicious. Was this some sort of trick word?
“I couldn’t believe it,” said the 10-year-old. “Of all the words, that was probably the easiest word. I thought, is this scooter, like a bike? Or is it some other word?”
As she had been trained to do, she asked for the word to be used in a sentence.
“It wasn’t a trick word,” she said. “That’s when I knew I had it.”
In the next moment, Hairston spelled the word correctly to become the district champion, in a field that drew competitors from 13 county elementary and middle schools.
Sitting in the audience, Hairston’s mom, Daysha Humphrey, watched in amazement as her daughter advanced through each round.
“Honestly, knowing how hard the words that she studied were and going up against so many older children, I didn’t have any expectations,” Humphrey said. “So before it started, I just told her to just have fun and do her best.”
For her part, Hairston didn’t seem surprised at the outcome.
“I was nervous every time it was my turn, but I just remembered how much I had studied and I had faith in myself,” she said.
A fourth-grader winning the district spelling bee may have been a surprise to most people, but not to Katetria Harris, who teaches fourth grade English Language Arts at West Lowndes, who was aware of Hairston long before she arrived in her class.
“Every year we have an awards ceremony at school for each grade. Every year, they would call her name to come up for an award and before she could get back to her seat, her name would be called again,” Harris said. “She’s really the perfect student. She works hard, wants to go deeper in the material. She listens carefully and you can tell she really thinks things through before she speaks. She’s very mature for her age, just a great student to have in the classroom.”
The day after the spelling bee, it was Hairston’s turn to be surprised.
“When I got to school, the principal told me, ‘Congratulations, superstar,'” she said. “But I didn’t know if anybody else knew about it. But when I got to class, my teacher, Ms. Harris, and everyone in class had made cards for me. They gave me some pencils and a gift certificate to Longhorn (her favorite restaurant). I was so surprised.”
Hairston hopes to be an actress someday, so taking the stage is something that comes naturally to her.
“I get nervous, but when I do, I just remember to have faith,” she said. “That helps me calm down.”
Later this spring, Hairston will compete in the state spelling bee, where once again she is almost certain to be among the youngest competitors.
Can she win?
“I think I’ll do fine,” she said. “I know I’m going to study hard and be ready and have faith in myself.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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